Yancy and Cavendish threw themselves on the sweeps and worked the raft clear of the keel boat, then the turbulent current seized the smaller craft and whirled it away into the night; as its black bulk receded from before his eyes the Earl of Lambeth spoke with the voice of authority and experience.

“It was a good fight and them fellows done well, but not near well enough.” A conclusion that could not be gainsaid. He added, “No one ain't hurt but them that had ought to have got hurt. Mr. Yancy's all right, and so's Mr. Carrington—who's mighty welcome here.” The earl's shock of red hair was bristling like the mane of some angry animal and his eyes still flashed with the light of battle, but he managed to summon up an expression of winning friendliness.

“Mr. Carrington's kin to me, Polly,” explained Yancy to Mrs. Cavendish. His voice was far from steady, for Hannibal had been gathered into his arms and had all but wrecked the stoic calm with which the Scratch Hiller was seeking to guard his emotions.

Polly smiled and dimpled at the Kentuckian. Trained to a romantic point of view she had a frank liking for handsome stalwart men. Cavendish was neither, but none knew better than Polly that where he was most lacking in appearance he was richest in substance. He carried scars honorably earned in those differences he had been prone to cultivate with less generous natures; for his scheme of life did not embrace the millennium.

“Thank God, you got here when you did!” said Carrington.

“We was some pushed fo' time, but we done it,” responded the earl modestly. He added, “What now?—do we make a landing?”

“No—unless it interferes with your plans not to. I 'want to get around the next bend before we tie up. Later we'll all go back. Can I count on you?”

“You shorely can. I consider this here as sociable a neighborhood as I ever struck. It pleases me well. Folks are up and doing hereabout.”

Carrington looked eagerly around in search of Betty. She was sitting on an upturned tub, a pathetic enough figure as she drooped against the wall of one of the shanties with all her courage quite gone from her. He made his way quickly to her side.

“La!” whispered Polly in Chills and Fever's ear. “If that pore young thing yonder keeps a widow it won't be because of any encouragement she gets from Mr. Carrington. If I ever seen marriage in a man's eye I seen it in his this minute!”

“Bruce!” cried Betty, starting up as Carrington approached. “Oh, Bruce, I am so glad you have come—you are not hurt?” She accepted his presence without question. She had needed him and he had not failed her.

“We are none of us hurt, Betty,” he said gently, as he took her hand.

He saw that the suffering she had undergone during the preceding twenty-four hours had left its record on her tired face and in her heavy eyes. She retained a shuddering consciousness of the unchecked savagery of those last moments on the keel boat; she was still hearing the oaths of the men as they struggled together, the sound of blows, and the dreadful silences that had followed them. She turned from him, and there came the relief of tears.

“There, Betty, the danger is over now and you were so brave while it lasted. I can't bear to have you cry!”

“I was wild with fear—all that time on the boat, Bruce—” she faltered between her sobs. “I didn't know but they would find you out. I could only wait and hope—and pray!”

“I was in no danger, dear. Didn't the girl tell you I was to take the place of a man Slosson was expecting? He never doubted that I was that man until a light—a signal it must have been—on the shore at the head of the bayou betrayed me.”

“Where are we going now, Bruce? Not the way they went—” and Betty glanced out into the black void where the keel boat had merged into the gloom.

“No, no—but we can't get the raft back up-stream against the current, so the best thing is to land at the Bates' plantation below here; then as soon as you are able we can return to Belle Plain,” said Carrington.

There was an interval broken only by the occasional sweep of the great steering oar as Cavendish coaxed the raft out toward the channel. The thought of Charley Norton's murder rested on Carrington like a pall. Scarcely a week had elapsed since he quitted Thicket Point and in that week the hand of death had dealt with them impartially, and to what end? Then the miles he had traversed in his hopeless journey up-river translated themselves into a division of time as well as space. They were just so much further removed from the past with its blight of tragic terror. He turned and glanced at Betty. He saw that her eyes held their steady look of wistful pity that was for the dead man; yet in spite of this, and in spite of the bounds beyond which he would not let his imagination carry him, the future enriched with sudden promise unfolded itself. The deep sense of recovered hope stirred within him. He knew there must come a day when he would dare to speak of his love, and she would listen.

“It's best we should land at Bates' place—we can get teams there,” he went on to explain. “And, Betty, wherever we go we'll go together, dear. Cavendish doesn't look as if he had any very urgent business of his own, and I reckon the same is true of Yancy, so I am going to keep them with us. There are some points to be cleared up when we reach Belle Plain—some folks who'll have a lot to explain or else quit this part of the state! And I intend to see that you are not left alone until—until I have the right to take care of you for good and all—that's what you want me to do one of these days, isn't it, darling?” and his eyes, glowing and infinitely tender, dwelt on her upturned face.

But Betty shrank from him in involuntary agitation.

“Oh, not now, Bruce—not now—we mustn't speak of that—it's wrong—it's wicked—you mustn't make me forget him!” she cried brokenly, in protest.

“Forgive me, Betty, I'll not speak of it again,” he said.

“Wait, Bruce, and some time—Oh, don't make me say it,” she gasped, “or I shall hate myself!” for in his presence she was feeling the horror of her past experience grow strangely remote, only the dull ache of her memories remained, and to these she clung. They were silent for a moment, then Carrington said:

“After I'm sure you'll be safe here perhaps I'll go south into the Choctaw Purchase. I've been thinking of that recently; but I'll find my way back here—don't misunderstand me—I'll not come too soon for even you, Betty. I loved Norton. He was one of my best friends, too,” he continued gently. “But you know—and I know—dear, the day will come when no matter where you are I shall find you again—find you and not lose you!”

Betty made no answer in words, but a soft and eloquent little hand was slipped into his and allowed to rest there.

Presently a light wind stirred the dead dense atmosphere, the mist lifted and enveloped the shore, showing them the river between piled-up masses of vapor. Apparently it ran for their raft alone. It was just twenty-four hours since Carrington had looked upon such another night but this was a different world the gray fog was unmasking—a world of hopes, and dreams, and rich content. Then the thought of Norton—poor Norton who had had his world, too, of hopes and dreams and rich content—

The calm of a highly domestic existence had resumed its interrupted sway on the raft. Mr. Cavendish, associated in Betty's memory with certain earsplitting manifestations of ferocious rage, became in the bosom of his family low-voiced and genial and hopelessly impotent to deal with his five small sons; while Yancy was again the Bob Yancy of Scratch Hill, violence of any sort apparently had no place in his nature. He was deeply absorbed in Hannibal's account of those vicissitudes which had befallen him during their separation. They were now seated before a cheerful fire that blazed on the hearth, the boy very close to Yancy with one hand clasped in the Scratch Hiller's, while about them were ranged the six small Cavendishes sedately sharing in the reunion of uncle and nevvy, toward which they felt they had honorably labored.

“And you wa'n't dead, Uncle Bob?” said Hannibal with a deep breath, viewing Yancy unmistakably in the flesh.

“Never once. I been floating peacefully along with these here titled friends of mine; but I was some anxious about you, son.”

“And Mr. Slosson, Uncle Bob—did you smack him like you smacked Dave Blount that day when he tried to steal me?” asked Hannibal, whose childish sense of justice demanded reparation for the wrongs they had suffered.

Mr. Yancy extended a big right hand, the knuckle of which was skinned and bruised.

“He were the meanest man I ever felt obliged fo' to hit with my fist, Nevvy; it appeared like he had teeth all over his face.”

“Sho—where's his hide, Uncle Bob?” cried the little Cavendishes in an excited chorus. “Sho—did you forget that?” They themselves had forgotten the unique enterprise to which Mr. Yancy was committed, but the allusion to Slosson had revived their memory of it.

“Well, he begged so piteous to be allowed fo' to keep his hide, I hadn't the heart to strip it off,” explained Mr. Yancy pleasantly. “And the winter's comin' onat this moment I can feel a chill in the air—don't you-all reckon he's goin' to need it fo' to keep the cold out,' Sho', you mustn't be bloody-minded!”

“What was it about Mr. Slosson's hide, Uncle Bob?” demanded Hannibal. “What was you a-goin' to do to that?”

“Why, Nevvy, after he beat me up and throwed me in the river, I was some peevish fo' a spell in my feelings fo' him,” said Yancy, in a tone of gentle regret. He glanced at his bruised hand. “But I'm right pleased to be able to say that I've got over all them oncharitable thoughts of mine.”

“And you seen the judge, Uncle Bob?” questioned Hannibal.

“Yes, I've seen the judge. We was together fo' part of a day. Me and him gets on fine.”

“Where is he now, Uncle Bob?”

“I reckon he's back at Belle Plain by this time. You see we left him in Raleigh along after noon to 'tend to some business he had on hand. I never seen a gentleman of his weight so truly spry on his legs—and all about you, Nevvy; while as to mind! Sho—why, words flowed out of him as naturally as water out of a branch.”

Of Hannibal's relationship to the judge he said nothing. He felt that was a secret to be revealed by the judge himself when he should see fit.

“Uncle Bob, who'm I going to live with now?” questioned Hannibal anxiously.

“That p'int's already come up, Nevvy—him and me's decided that there won't be no friction. You-all will just go on living with him.”

“But what about you, Uncle Bob?” cried Hannibal, lifting a wistful little face to Yancy's.

“Oh, me?—well, you-all will go right on living with me.”

“And what will come of Mr. Mahaffy?”

“I reckon you-all will go right on living with him, too.”

“Uncle Bob, you mean you reckon we are all going to live in one house?”

“I 'low it will have to be fixed that-a-ways,” agreed Yancy.