darkness. Nothing was to be seen; the open space of dimly outlined
landscape had that blank, uncommunicative impenetrability with which
Nature always confronts and surprises us at such moments. It seemed to
Phemie that she was the only human being present. Yet after the feeling
had passed she fancied she heard the wash of the current against some
object in the stream, half stationary and half resisting.

"Is any one down there? Is that you, Mr. Parmlee?" she called.

There was a pause. Some invisible auditor said to another, "It's a young
lady." Then the first voice rose again in a more deferential tone: "Are
we anywhere near Sidon?"

"This is Sidon," answered Harkutt, who had risen, and was now quite
obliterating his daughter's outline at the window.

"Thank you," said the voice. "Can we land anywhere here, on this bank?"

"Run down, pop; they're strangers," said the girl, with excited, almost
childish eagerness.

"Hold on," called out Harkutt, "I'll be thar in a moment!" He hastily
thrust his feet into a pair of huge boots, clapped on an oilskin hat
and waterproof, and disappeared through a door that led to a lower
staircase. Phemie, still at the window, albeit with a newly added sense
of self-consciousness, hung out breathlessly. Presently a beam of light
from the lower depths of the house shot out into the darkness. It was
her father with a bull's-eye lantern. As he held it up and clambered
cautiously down the bank, its rays fell upon the turbid rushing stream,
and what appeared to be a rough raft of logs held with difficulty