Tisdale’s eyes rested involuntarily again on Mrs. Weatherbee.  She did not say anything, but she met the look with her direct gaze; her short upper lip parted, and the color burned softly in her cheek.  “I made the Lilliwaup,” he went on, “about two miles from the mouth, between the upper and lower falls.  The river breaks in cascades there, hundreds of them as far as one can see, divided by tremendous boulders.”

“We know the place,” said Elizabeth quickly.  “Our first cruise on the Aquila was to the Lilliwaup.  We climbed to the upper falls and spent hours along the cascades.  Those boulders, hundreds of them, rose through the spray, all covered with little trees and ferns.  There never was anything like it, but we called it The Fairy Isles.”

Tisdale nodded.  “It was near the end of that reach I found myself.  The channels gather below, you remember, and pour down a steep declivity under a natural causeway.  But the charm and grandeur were lost on me that day.  I wanted to reach the old trail from the falls on the opposite shore, and I knew that stone bridge fell short a span, so I began to work my way from boulder to boulder out to the main stream.  It was a wide chasm to leap, with an upward spring to a tilted table of basalt, and I overbalanced, slipped down, and, coasting across the surface, recovered enough on the edge to ease myself off to a nearly submerged ledge.  There I stopped.”  He paused an instant, and his eyes sought Marcia Feversham’s; the amusement played lightly on his flexible lips.  “I had stumbled on another woman.  She was seated on a lower boulder, sketching the stone bridge.  I was behind her, but I saw a pretty hand and forearm, some nice brown hair tucked under a big straw hat, and a trim and young figure in a well-made gown of blue linen.  Then she said pleasantly, without turning her head:  ’Well, John, what luck?’

“I drew back into a shallow niche of the rock.  I had not forgotten the first impression I made on the woman up the Duckabush and had no desire to ‘scare ladies.’  But my steamer was almost due, and I hoped John would come soon.  Getting no reply from him, she rose and glanced around.  Then she looked at her watch, put her hand to her mouth, and sent a long call up the gorge.  ‘Joh-n.  Joh-n, hello!’ She had a carrying, singer’s voice, but it brought no answer, so after a moment she gathered up her things and started towards the bank.  I watched her disappear among the trees; then, my fear of missing the steamer growing stronger than the dread of terrifying her, I followed.  The trail drops precipitously around the lower falls, you remember, and I struck the level where the river bends at the foot of the cataract, with considerable noise.  I found myself in a sort of open-air parlor flanked by two tents; rustic seats under a canopy of maple boughs, hammocks, a percolator bubbling on a sheet-iron contrivance over the camp-fire coals, and, looking at me across a table, the girl.  ’I beg your pardon,’ I hurried to say.  ‘Don’t be afraid of me.’