“What’s the matter, idiot?  Is your back broken?”

“Yes—­No, sir!” The fellow spun the fly-wheel vigorously; the little craft began to vibrate and quiver and then swung out from shore.

A moment later and the engineman yelled.  He came stumbling forward and seized the steering-wheel as the boat grazed a buoy.

“That’s right, you steer,” Dan laughed, relaxing his hold.  To Natalie he said, “There’s a sky-pilot in Omar,” and pressed her to him.

“It’s a long way to Omar,” she answered, then hid her face against his breast and said, meekly, “There’s one in Cortez, too, and he’s much nearer.”

XXII

HOW THE HAZARD WAS PLAYED

Eliza’s greeting to the runaways was as warm as their hearts could wish.  She divined the truth before they could speak, and took Natalie in her arms with a glad cry of welcome.  The two girls kissed each other, wept, laughed, wept a little more, kissed again, and then the story came out.

Dan was plainly swollen with pride.

“I walloped him, Sis!” he told her.  “I got even for the whole family, and I believe his eyes are closed even to the beauties of nature.  He won’t be able to read the wedding-notice.”

Eliza hugged his arm and looked at him adoringly.

“It must have been perfectly splendid!”

Natalie nodded.  “I was asleep,” she said, “but Dan shocked me wide awake.  Can you imagine it?  I didn’t know my own feelings until he went for—­that brute.  Then I knew all at once that I had loved him all the time.  Isn’t it funny?  It came over me—­so suddenly!  I—­I can’t realize that he’s mine.”  She turned her eyes upon him with an expression that made his chest swell proudly.

“Gee!” he exclaimed.  “If I’d known how she felt I’d have pitched into the first fellow I met.  A man’s an awful fool till he gets married.”

There followed a recital of the day’s incidents, zestful, full of happy digressions, endless; for the couple, after the manner of lovers, took it for granted that Eliza was caught up into the seventh heaven along with them.  Dan was drunk with delight, and his bride seemed dizzied by the change which had overtaken her.  She looked upon it as miraculous, almost unbelievable, and under the spell of her happiness her real self asserted itself.  Those cares and humiliations which had reacted to make her cold and self-contained disappeared, giving place to an impetuous girlishness that distracted her newly made husband and delighted Eliza.  The last lingering doubts that Dan’s sister had cherished were cleared away.

It was not until the bride had been banished to prepare for dinner that Eliza thought to ask her brother: 

“Have you told Mr. O’Neil?”

The triumph faded suddenly out of his face.

“Gee, no!  I haven’t told anybody.”

They stared at each other, reading the thoughts they had no need to voice.  “Well, I’ve done it!  It’s too late now,” said Dan, defiantly.