ar diving outfit----"

Unexpectedly Ri-Ri recovered her self-possession. Again she fled from
the consummation of the scene.

"I shall wear nothing so unbecoming," she flung lightly back. "And it
has not been raining for ever so long. Unless you wish to build a nest
in the forest, like a new fashion of oriole, Signor Byrd, you had better
hurry and catch up with the others."

Johnny did not speak as they came out of the woods and in silence they
hurried along the path on the river's edge.

The sun came out again to light them; on the green leaves about them the
wetness glittered and dried and the ephemeral shower seemed as unreal as
the memory it evoked.

With her head bent Maria Angelina pressed on in a haste that grew into
anxiety. Not a sound came back to them from those others ahead. Not a
voice. Not a footstep.

And presently the path appeared dying under their feet.

Green moss overspread it. Brambles linked arms across it.

"They are not here. We are on the wrong way," cried Maria Angelina and
turned startled eyes on the young man.

Johnny Byrd refused to take alarm.

"They must have crossed the river farther back--that's the answer," he
said easily. "We went past the right crossing--probably just after the
storm. You know you were speeding like a two-year-old on the home
stretch."

But Ri-Ri refused to shoulder all that blame.

"It might have been before the storm--while we were lingering so," she
urged distressfully. "You know that for so long we had heard nothing--we
ought to go back quickly--very quickly and find that crossing."

Johnny did not look back. He looked across the river, which ran more
deeply here between narrowed banks, and then glanced on ahead.

"Oh, we'll go ahead and cross the next chance we get," he informed her.
"We can strike in from there to old Baldy. I know the way. . . . Trust
your Uncle Leatherstocking," he told her genially.

But no geniality appeased Maria Angelina's deepening sense of
foreboding.

She quickened her steps after him as he strode on ahead, gallantly
holding back brambles for her and helping her scramble over fallen logs,
and she assented, with the eagerness of anxiety, when he announced a
place as safe for crossing.

It was at the head of a mild rush of rapids, and an outcropping of large
rocks made possible, though slippery, stepping-stones.

But Ri-Ri's heelless shoes were rubber soled, and she was both fearless
and alert. And though the last le