“Then I remain with them,” she replied, with dignity and firmness.

The man who had first remonstrated with Rawbon, stepped up to him and 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 numerous ruts and hollows that were soon transformed into miniature pools and streams.  Oriana strove to treat the adventure as a theme for laughter, and for awhile chatted gaily with her companions; but it was evident that she was fast becoming weary, and that her thin-shod feet were wounded by constant contact with the twigs and sharp stones that it was impossible to avoid in the darkness.  Her dress was torn, and heavy with mud and moisture, and the two young men were pained to perceive that, in spite of her efforts and their watchful care, she stumbled frequently with exhaustion, and leaned heavily on their arms as she labored through the miry soil.

One of the party opportunely remembered a charcoal-burner’s hut in the vicinity, that would at least afford a rude shelter from the driving storm.  Several of the men hastened in search of it, and soon a halloo not far distant indicated that the cabin, such as it was, had been discovered.  As they approached, they were surprised to observe rays of light streaming through the cracks and crevices, as if a fire were blazing within.  It was an uninviting structure, hastily constructed of unhewn logs, and upon ordinary occasions Oriana would have hesitated to pass the threshold; but wet and weary as she was, she was glad to obtain the shelter of even so poor a hovel.