Can you climb a tree?"
"I can--but I won't!" she refused flatly, her cheeks very red.
"Then I fancy we'll have to keep on in this manner. It's a confounded
shame--the whole business. Just as I thought everything was going so
smoothly, too. It was all arranged to a queen's taste--nothing was left
undone. Bracken was to meet us at his uncle's boathouse down there,
and--good heavens, there was a shot!"
The sharp crack of a rifle broke upon the still, balmy air, as they say
in the "yellow-backs," and the fugitives looked at each other with
suddenly awakened dread.
"The fools!" grated the man.
"What do they mean?" cried the breathless girl, very white in the face.
"They are trying to frighten us, that's all. Hang it! If I only knew the
lay of the land. I'm completely lost, Marjory. Do you know precisely
where we are?"
"Our home is off to the north about three miles. We are almost opposite
Crow's Cliff--the wildest part of the country. There are no houses along
this part of the river. All of the summer houses are farther up or on
the other side. It is too hilly here. There is a railroad off there
about six miles. There isn't a boathouse or fisherman's hut nearer than
two miles. Mr. Bracken keeps his boat at the point--two miles south, at
least."
"Yes; that's where we were to have gone--by boat. Hang it all! Why did
we ever leave the boat? You can never scramble through all this brush to
Bracken's place; it's all I can do.
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