In the smoother water of the long reach, Hannibal began to make head against the flood.  The farther shore became the nearer, and finally he drove the bow of his canoe up on a bit of shelving bank, and seizing his pack and rifle, sprang ashore.  Panting and exhausted, he paused just long enough to push the canoe out into the stream again, and then, with his rifle and pack in his hands, turned his small tear-stained face toward the wooded slope beyond.  As he toiled up it in the wide silence of the dawn, a mournful wind burst out of the north, filling the air about him with withered leaves and the dead branches of trees.

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE RIVER

Betty stood under a dripping umbrella in the midst of a drenching downpour, her boxes and trunks forming a neat pyramid of respectable size beside her.  She was somewhat perturbed in spirit, since they contained much elaborate finery all in the very latest eastern fashion, spoils that were the fruit of a heated correspondence with Tom, who hadn’t seemed at all alive to the fact that Betty was nearly eighteen and in her own right a young woman of property.  A tarpaulin had been thrown over the heap, and with one eye on it and the other on the stretch of yellow canal up which they were bringing the fast packet Pioneer, she was waiting impatiently to see her belongings transferred to a place of safety.

Just arrived by the four-horse coach that plyed regularly between Washington and Georgetown, she had found the long board platform beside the canal crowded with her fellow passengers, their number augmented by those who delight to share vicariously in travel and to whom the departure of a stage or boat was a matter of urgent interest requiring their presence, rain or shine.  Suddenly she became aware of a tall, familiar figure moving through the crowd.  It was Bruce Carrington.  At the same moment he saw her, and with a casual air that quite deceived her, approached; and Betty, who had been feeling very lonely and very homesick, was somehow instantly comforted at sight of him.  She welcomed him almost as a friend.

“You’re leaving to-night?” he asked.

“Yes—­isn’t it miserable the way it rains?  And why are they so slow—­why don’t they hurry with that boat?”

“It’s in the last lock now,” explained Carrington.

“My clothes will all be ruined,” said Betty.  He regarded the dress she wore with instant concern.  “No—­I mean the things in my trunks; this doesn’t matter,” and Betty nodded toward the pile under the steaming tarpaulin.  Carrington’s dark eyes opened with an expression of mild wonder.  And so those trunks were full of clothes—­Oh, Lord!—­he looked down at the flushed, impatient face beside him with amusement.

“I’ll see that they are taken care of,” he said, for the boat was alongside the platform now; and gathering up Betty’s hand luggage, he helped her aboard.