laid his hand heavily on his shoulder:

"Look here, Seth Rawbon, you've played out your hand in this game, now
mind that. Miss Weems, you're free to go, anyhow, with them chaps or
not, just as you like."

They stepped down the embankment, but the boats were nowhere to be seen.
Rawbon, anticipating some trouble with his gang, had made a pretence
only of securing the craft to a neighboring bush. The current had
carried the boats out into the stream, and they had floated down the
river and were lost to sight in the darkness.




CHAPTER V.


There was no remedy but to cross the woodland and cornfields that for
about a league intervened between their position and the highway. They
commenced the tedious tramp, Arthur and Harold exerting themselves to
the utmost to protect Oriana from the brambles, and to guide her
footsteps along the uneven ground and among the decayed branches and
other obstacles that beset their path. Their rude companions, too, with
the exception of Rawbon, who walked moodily apart, seemed solicitous to
assist her with their rough attentions. To add to the disagreeable
nature of their situation, the rain began to fall in torrents before
they had accomplished one half of the distance. They were then in the
midst of a tract of wooded land that was almost impassable for a lady in
the darkness, on account of the yielding nature of the soil, and the