and vehement gesticulations to the rescue.

Springing with the quickness of thought from his victim,
the settler was in the next moment at the side of
Middlemore. Seizing him from behind by the arm within
his nervous grasp, he pressed the latter with such
prodigious force as to cause him to relinquish, by a
convulsive movement, the firm hold he had hitherto kept
of his adversary.

"In, boy, to the canoe for your life," he exclaimed
hurriedly, as following up his advantage, he spun the
officer round, and sent him tottering to the spot were
Grantham lay, still stupified and half throttled. The
next instant saw him heaving the canoe from the shore,
with all the exertion called for by his desperate situation.
And all this was done so rapidly, in so much less time
than it will take our readers to trace it, that before
the horseman, so opportunely arriving, had reached the
spot, the canoe, with its inmates, had pushed from the
shore.

Without pausing to consider the rashness and apparent
impracticability of his undertaking, the strange horseman,
checking his rein, and burying the rowels of his spurs
deep into the flanks of his steed, sent him bounding and
plunging into the lake, in pursuit of the fugitives.

He himself evinced every symptom of one in a state of
intoxication. Brandishing a stout cudgel over his head,