Yet what, in reality, did he know of Ben Darby?  He had liked the man’s face:  whence he came and what was his real business on the Yuga he had not the least idea.  All at once a baffling apprehension crept like a chill through his frame.

He could not laugh it away.  It laid hold of him, refusing to be dispelled.  It was as if an inner voice was warning him, telling him to rush down to the river bank and check that canoe ride at all costs.  It occurred to him, for the moment, that this might be premonition of a disastrous accident, yet vaguely he sensed a plot, an obscure design that filled him with ghastly terror.  Once more the man started for the door.

Unaware of his ground, he did not hurry at first.  He hardly knew what to say, by what excuse he could call Beatrice back to the landing.  His heart was racing incomprehensibly in his breast, and all at once he started to run.

At the first step he fell sprawling, and stark panic was upon him when he got to his feet again.  And when he reached the landing the canoe was already near the opposite shore, heading swiftly downstream.

He saw in one glance that the craft was rather heavily laden, Fenris atop the pile of duffle, and that Ben was paddling with a remarkably fast, easy stroke.  “Come back, Beatrice,” he shouted.  “You’ve forgotten something.”

The girl turned, waving, but Ben’s voice drowned out hers.  “We’ll see you later,” he called in a gay voice.  “We can’t come back now.”

“Come back!” Neilson called again.  “I order you—­”

He stared intently, hoping that the man would turn.  Already they were practically out of hearing; and not even Beatrice was dipping her paddle in obedience to his command.  Looking more closely, he saw that the man only was paddling.

Then his eye fell to the landing on which he stood, instinctively trying to locate the second paddle.  It lay at his feet.  A foolhardy thing to do, he thought, a broken paddle, out there above the rapids, would mean death and no other thing.  Helpless in the current, the canoe could not be guided through those fearful gates of peril below.  If by a thousandth chance it escaped the rocks, it would be carried for unnumbered miles into a land unknown, a territory that could be entered only by the greatest difficulty—­packing day after day over range and through thicket with a great train of pack horses—­and from which the egress, except by the same perilous water route, would be almost impossible.  But the thought passed as he discerned the white paper that had been fastened in the paddle blade.

He bent for it with eager hand.  He knew instinctively that it contained an all-important and sinister message for him.  His eyes leaped over the bold writing on the exterior.

“To Ezra Melville’s murderers,” Ben had written.  And with that reading Jeffery Neilson knew a terror beyond any experienced in the darkest nightmare of his iniquitous life.