Only the lights of the sailboat were visible now, but suddenly a girl’s voice rose clear and sweet, singing to the accompaniment of guitar and mandolin.  The guitar throbbed; and on its deep chords the mandolin wove its melody.  The voice seemed to steal out of the heart of the night and float over the still waters.  The unseen singer never knew the mockery of the song she sang.  It was an old song and the air was one familiar the world round.  And it bore the answer to Dan’s question which Sylvia had carried long in her heart, but could not speak.  She did not speak it then; it was ordained that she should never speak it.  And Dan knew and understood.

     “Who is Sylvia, what is she,
     That all the swains adore her?”

“Who is Sylvia?” Dan knew in that hour the answer of tears!

The song ceased.  When Dan saw Sylvia’s head lift, he silently took the paddle and impelled the canoe toward the red, white, and blue lanterns that defined Mrs. Owen’s landing.  They were within a hundred yards of the intervening green light of the Bassett dock when a brilliant meteor darted across the zenith, and Dan’s exclamation broke the tension.  Their eyes turned toward the heavens—­Sylvia’s still bright with tears, Dan knew, though he could not see her face.

“Poor lost star!” she murmured softly.

Dan was turning the canoe slightly to avoid the jutting shore that made a miniature harbor at the Bassett’s when Sylvia uttered a low warning.  Dan, instantly alert, gripped his paddle and waited.  Some one had launched a canoe at the Bassett boathouse.  There was a stealthiness in the performance that roused him to vigilance.  He cautiously backed water and waited.  A word or two spoken in a low tone reached Dan and Sylvia:  two persons seemed to be embarking.

A canoe shot out suddenly from the dock, driven by a confident hand.

“It must be Marian; but there’s some one with her,” said Sylvia.

Dan had already settled himself in the stern ready for a race.

“It’s probably that idiot Allen,” he growled.  “We must follow them.”

Away from the shore shadows the starlight was sufficient to confirm Dan’s surmise as to the nature of this canoe flight.  It was quite ten o’clock, and the lights in the Bassett house on the bluff above had been extinguished.  It was at once clear to Dan that he must act promptly.  Allen, dismayed by the complications that beset his love-affair, had proposed an elopement, and Marian had lent a willing ear.

“They’re running away, Sylvia; we’ve got to head them off.”  He bent to his paddle vigorously.  “They can’t possibly get away.”

But it was not in Marian’s blood to be thwarted in her pursuit of adventure.  She was past-mistress of the canoeist’s difficult art, and her canoe flew on as though drawn away into the dark on unseen cords.

“You’d better lend a hand,” said Dan, and Sylvia turned round and knelt, paddling Indian fashion.  The canoe skimmed the water swiftly.  It was in their thoughts that Marian and Allen must not land at Waupegan, where their intentions would be advertised to the world.  The race must end before the dock was reached.  At the end of a quarter of an hour Dan called to Sylvia to cease paddling.