my plans, I will not stop at
anything in the world."

"Why in the world should you threaten me, Mrs. Livingstone?"

Mrs. Livingstone's lips parted in a terrible smile as she walked away.

"You? Why, I was not thinking of you at all."

Above the Egret a crippled white ibis, with a broken leg impeding its
flight, was flying clumsily across the river. Close above it, with
deadly intent, sailed a brown hawk. The hawk struck, but in spite of
its handicap the ibis swerved in time to escape the deadly talons.
Then pursued and pursuer disappeared in the jungle across the river.

At Gumbo Key the black, scowlike hull carrying the ditching machinery,
moving slowly in tow of a gasoline tug, was seen making headway across
the bay toward the mouth of the river. As the Egret curved gracefully
round the Key and came alongside the tug to place Payne aboard, Annette
came and stood by his side.

"You're not going back with us?" she asked.

"No. It's better that I shouldn't. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I suppose it is." Her eyes looked out across the bay to the open
sea beyond. "Oh! I wish I weren't going back there; I wish I would
never see that place again."

"Do you mean that?"

"How can you doubt it!"

The Egret had completed her curve and with throttled engines was
creeping smoothly up to the ditching scow's side.

"You don't have to go back," said Payne. "The ditching can wait. I'll
have them moor the ditcher here. You can get aboard the tug and I'll
have them take you to Key West, to Fort Myers, Tampa--any place you
want to go. From there you can go anywhere, as far away as you wish to
go."

"Really?" she cried, "Oh, but that poor little tug--the Egret would
catch her in a mile."

"If you get on that tug I will see that you go wherever you wish to go."

"Once aboard the lugger and the girl is free!" she quoted. "No, no.
You don't understand. It isn't so simple as that. If it was merely a
question of getting away, do you think I would be afraid? It's more
than that. It's all in myself, all here." She struck her bosom with a
white clenched fist. "It is something in myself--it's something I've
got to settle all by myself. You must not try to interfere. Win or
lose, no one can help me--no one. That is why I must go back--though I
am afraid."

The Egret had crept past the length of the ditcher, disdaining to
approach its grimy hull with her immaculate sides. She was approaching
the squat lit