“Oh, dear, I wish we were safely at—­” she paused.

“At home?” he asked quickly.

“At Bracken’s,” she finished; and if any of the pursuers had been near enough he might have heard the unmistakable suggestion of a kiss.

“I feel better,” he said, squaring his shoulders.  “Now, let me think.  We must outwit these fellows, whoever they are.  By George, I remember one of them!  That old fellow who bought the horse is with them.  That’s it!  The horse is mixed up in this, I’ll bet my head.”  They sat upon the ground for several minutes, he thinking deeply, she listening with her pretty ears intent.

“I wonder if they’ve left anybody to guard our boat?” he said suddenly.  “Come on, Marjory; let’s investigate!  By George, it would be just like them to leave it unprotected!”

Once more they were moving cautiously through the brush, headed for the river.  Mr. Jack Barnes, whoever he was and whatever his crime, was a resourceful, clever young man.  He had gauged the intelligence of the pursuers correctly.  When he peered through the brush along the river bank he saw the skiff in the reeds below, just as they had left it.  There was the lunch basket, the wee bit of a steamer trunk with all its labels, a parasol and a small handbag.

“Goody, goody!” Marjory cried like a happy child.

“Don’t show yourself yet, dearie.  I’ll make sure.  They may have an ambuscade.  Wait here for me.”

He crept down the bank and back again before she could fully subdue the tremendous thumping his temerity had started in her left side.

“It’s safe and sound,” he whispered joyously.  “The idiots have forgotten the boat.  Quick, dear; let’s make a dash for it!  Their raft is upstream a hundred yards, and it is also deserted.  If we can once get well across the river we can give them the laugh.”

“But they may shoot us from the bank,” she protested as they plunged through the weeds.

“They surely wouldn’t shoot a woman!” he cried gayly.

“But you are not a woman!”

“And I’m not afraid of mice or men.  Jump in!”

Off from the weeds shot the light skiff.  The water splashed for a moment under the spasmodic strokes of the oarsman, and then the little boat streaked out into the river like a thing of life.  Marjory sat in the stern and kept her eyes upon the bank they were leaving.  Jack Barnes drove every vestige of his strength into the stroke; somehow he pulled like a man who had learned how on a college crew.  They were half way across the broad river before they were seen from the hills.  The half dozen men who lingered at the base of Crow’s Cliff had shouted the alarm to their friends on the other side, and the fugitives were sighted once more.  But it was too late.  The boat was well out of gunshot range and making rapid progress downstream in the shelter of the high bluffs below Crow’s Cliff.  Jack Barnes was dripping with perspiration, but his stroke was none the feebler.