Mrs. Rolleston hesitated; in her heart she acquiesced; but what would the Colonel say?  The younger ones took silence for consent, and Cecil was reclining on a bear-skin at the bottom of the canoe, Lascelles kneeling in a cramped attitude, with the steering paddle, in the bow, and Bertie in charge of the sail, before words of prohibition could come from her.

“Dear me!  I don’t half like it,” said she, nervously.  “How stormy it looks in the west.  How long will it take you?”

“We shall have the wind back,” said Bertie.  “About two hours and a half—­three at the outside.  I’ll bring her home in good time for dinner,”—­and Cecil kissed her hand in laughing defiance while he spread the sail to the wind, and, catching the light breeze after a flap or two, they glided gaily on their course.

“Don’t move about, Cecil,” said Du Meresq; “we are rather low down in the water.”

No one knew better than Cecil, who had quite appreciated the small spice of risk in weighting the frail bark with an additional person; but then it was worth it to sail back alone with Bertie.

“You are getting dreadfully wet, I am afraid, Miss Rolleston,” said Lascelles.  “Ease the sail a bit, Bertie.”

“You shouldn’t keep her head to the waves,” argued the other, “as if it were a boat.  Keep her broadside to them, and we shan’t ship half so many.”

There was a fresh breeze when they left the landing, but, after getting three miles or so on their way, the wind rose almost into a squall; white horses raced on the lake, and, in spite of every effort of the two young men, about one wave in ten flung a curl of spray over Cecil.  Bertie threw off his coat, and made her thrust her arms into it as well as she could, and Lascelles followed suit by spreading his over her knees.  The sky became stormier, and the wind howled ominously.  They had started full of spirits, and gay talk and chaff had been bandied among them.  No one could quite tell when it dropped, for it had been kept up with an effort after the threatening appearance of things had sobered them.

Cecil was drenched to the skin, but they ceased to express solicitude on that account, for a more pressing apprehension filled each mind, that the canoe so weighted could not live through it much longer.

The girl was stiffening in the rigidity of her reclining attitude.  The least movement would have capsized them, and each wave larger than the rest she expected to swamp the canoe.  Suddenly she remembered Du Meresq having once said he could not swim, and then, for the first time, her heart sunk, and a sickening horror came over her.