“Mr. Carrington’s kin to me, Polly,” explained Yancy to Mrs. Cavendish.  His voice was far from steady, for Hannibal had been gathered into his arms and had all but wrecked the stoic calm with which the Scratch Hiller was seeking to guard his emotions.

Polly smiled and dimpled at the Kentuckian.  Trained to a romantic point of view she had a frank liking for handsome stalwart men.  Cavendish was neither, but none knew better than Polly that where he was most lacking in appearance he was richest in substance.  He carried scars honorably earned in those differences he had been prone to cultivate with less generous natures; for his scheme of life did not embrace the millennium.

“Thank God, you got here when you did!” said Carrington.

“We was some pushed fo’ time, but we done it,” responded the earl modestly.  He added, “What now?—­do we make a landing?”

“No—­unless it interferes with your plans not to.  I ’want to get around the next bend before we tie up.  Later we’ll all go back.  Can I count on you?”

“You shorely can.  I consider this here as sociable a neighborhood as I ever struck.  It pleases me well.  Folks are up and doing hereabout.”

Carrington looked eagerly around in search of Betty.  She was sitting on an upturned tub, a pathetic enough figure as she drooped against the wall of one of the shanties with all her courage quite gone from her.  He made his way quickly to her side.

“La!” whispered Polly in Chills and Fever’s ear.  “If that pore young thing yonder keeps a widow it won’t be because of any encouragement she gets from Mr. Carrington.  If I ever seen marriage in a man’s eye I seen it in his this minute!”

“Bruce!” cried Betty, starting up as Carrington approached.  “Oh, Bruce, I am so glad you have come—­you are not hurt?” She accepted his presence without question.  She had needed him and he had not failed her.

“We are none of us hurt, Betty,” he said gently, as he took her hand.

He saw that the suffering she had undergone during the preceding twenty-four hours had left its record on her tired face and in her heavy eyes.  She retained a shuddering consciousness of the unchecked savagery of those last moments on the keel boat; she was still hearing the oaths of the men as they struggled together, the sound of blows, and the dreadful silences that had followed them.  She turned from him, and there came the relief of tears.

“There, Betty, the danger is over now and you were so brave while it lasted.  I can’t bear to have you cry!”

“I was wild with fear—­all that time on the boat, Bruce—­” she faltered between her sobs.  “I didn’t know but they would find you out.  I could only wait and hope—­and pray!”

“I was in no danger, dear.  Didn’t the girl tell you I was to take the place of a man Slosson was expecting?  He never doubted that I was that man until a light—­a signal it must have been—­on the shore at the head of the bayou betrayed me.”