the skiff--and landed me on
dry land."

"You were in shallow water, then?" put in the smiling proprietress.

"Oh no, fairly deep. Fitzroy was up to his waist in the stream."

"And the boat upset?" came the amazed chorus.

"I didn't quite mean that. What actually happened was this. I
discovered that the hour was rather late, and Fitzroy was rowing down
stream at a great pace when some sunken thing, a tree-root he thinks,
caught the side of the boat and started a plank. I was so taken by
surprise that I should have sat right there and gone to the bottom
with the boat, but Fitzroy jumped overboard straight away and hiked me
out."

Ready-tongued Cynthia was beginning to find detailed explanation
rather difficult, and her speech reverted to the picturesque idioms of
her native land. It was the happiest ruse she could have adopted.
Everyone laughed at the notion of being "hiked out." None of her
hearers knew quite what it meant, yet it covered the requisite ground,
which was more than might have been achieved by explicit English.

"Where did the accident take place?" asked the landlady.

Cynthia was vague on this point, but when she told how the return
journey was made, the pretty Welsh waitress hit on a theory.

"In-deed to goot-ness, miss," she cried, "you wass be-tween the
Garren River an' Huntsham Bridge. It iss a bad place, so it iss,
however. Me an' my young man wass shoaled there once, we wass."

Cynthia felt that her face and neck had grown positively scarlet, and
she could have kissed the well-disposed landlady for entering on a
voluble disquisition as to the tricks played by the Wye on those
unaware of its peculiarities, especially at night. A general
conversation broke out, but Mrs. Devar, rapidly regaining her spirits
after enduring long hours of the horrible obsession that Medenham had
run off with her heiress, noted that telltale blush. At present her
object was to assist rather than embarrass, so with a fine air of
motherly solicitude she asked:

"Where did you leave Fitzroy?"

"He saw preparations being made to send boats in search of us, and he
went to stop them. Oh, here he is!"

Medenham entered, and the impulsive Mrs. Devar ran to meet him. Though
he had been in the river again only five minutes earlier, the walk up
a dust-laden path had covered his sopping boots with mud, and in the
not very powerful light of the hall, where a score or more of anxious
people were collected, it was difficul