board on the arm of her
Otto. Thinking how easily in the play of chance the lost brother might
have been saved and her saved brother lost, and recalling the plight of
the _Westwood_, she suddenly realized that no one could tell who might
go next--"to high-low." Otto Marburg, glancing up, saw her tears, and
would have paused but for the sacred burden on his arm.

At the same time, for eyes, even wet eyes, as lively as Ramsey's there
were livelier things to see. Hugh had gone ashore and up to the
wharf-boat, crossed it, and boarded the busy _Antelope_ with several
letters in hand, the twins' letter among them. Said the squire's
brother-in-law:

"That boy must know the danger to him there is in that document," and
the planter of Milliken's Bend agreed.

So did their wives. There was "everything in it he wouldn't want there
and nothing he would want."

He was doing the "brave thing," they all said, and the wives called it
too brave. The brave thing, they thought, "ran a slim chance against
Hayle's twins."

"My dear ladies," said the planter, "it runs the only chance he has. The
brave thing is the only thing those two young fire-eaters have any
respect for." He stopped short; Ramsey had overheard. Yet she kept a
pretty front.

"Why do you call him 'that boy'?" she laughingly asked.

"Well, really, because," replied the planter, twinkling, "he's so much
more than a boy. Don't you think so?"

She gave him a sidelong glance, twitched her curls, and looked down
ashore. Her mother was there with the "boy's" grandfather. They were
getting into a rickety hack. Now Hugh joined them from the _Antelope_,
and they went whipping up the steep road across the face of the bluff
and into the "stuck-up" Natchez atop the hill. She guessed their errand.

Meantime the _Westwood_ had reached the wharf-boat, put her bridal pair
aboard the _Antelope_, and backed out again so promptly that as the
_Antelope_ cast off and started after her she had rounded Marengo Bend
and was showing only her smoke across Cowpen Point. And now reappeared
Madame Hayle, the commodore, and Hugh, bringing with them--welcome
sight--two sisters of charity. The moment they touched the lower deck
the _Votaress_, with John Courteney on her roof, backed away, and soon,
in the first bend above, any eye could plainly see the _Westwood_, still
less than four miles off across country though eight by the river, with
the _Antelope_ four miles behind her and four ahead of