s fingers would open and shut
convulsively.

Time alone would disclose what was to happen to us; in the interval
there was nothing to do but wait. We had reached the stage where anxiety
begins to take the place of excitement, and we shifted restlessly from
spot to spot and looked at the tug. She was ploughing along after us,
and to such good purpose that presently I began to catch the white of
the seas along her bows, and the bright red with which her pipe was
tipped. Farrar alone seemed to take but slight interest in her. More
than once I glanced at him as he stood under me, but his eye was on the
shuddering leach of the sail. Then I leaned over.

"What do you think of it?" I asked.

"I told you this morning Drew would have handcuffs on him before night,"
he replied, without raising his head.

"Hang your joking, Farrar; I know more than you about it."

"Then what's the use of asking me?"

"Don't you see that I'm ruined if we're caught?" I demanded, a little
warmly.

"No, I don't see it," he replied. "You don't suppose I think you fool
enough to risk this comedy if the man were guilty, do you? I don't
believe all that rubbish about his being the criminal's double, either.
That's something the girls got up for your benefit."

I ignored this piece of brutality.

"But I'm ruined anyway."

"How?"

I explained shortly what I thought our friend, O'Meara, would do under
the circumstances. An inference sufficed Farrar.

"Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked gravely. "I
would have put into Far Harbor."

"Because I didn't think of it," I confessed.

Farrar pulled down the corners of his mouth with trying not to smile.

"Miss Thorn is a woman of brains," he remarked gently; "I respect her."

I wondered by what mysterious train of reasoning he had arrived at this
conclusion. He said nothing for a while, but toyed with the spokes of
the wheel, keeping the wind in the sail with undue nicety.

"I can't make them out," he said, all at once.

"Then you believe they're after us?"

"I changed the course a point or two, just to try them."

"And--"

"And they changed theirs."

"Who could have informed?"

"Drew, of course," I said; "who else?"

He laughed.

"Drew doesn't know anything about Allen," said he; "and, besides, he's
no more of a detective than I am."

"But Drew was told there was a criminal on the island."

"Who told him?"

I repeated the conversation between Drew and Mr.