"And it's varra little to his credit, let me tell ye that, young man! 'Tis mair becomin' to Sir Walter that he was sheriff depute o' Selkirkshire and clerk o' session for abune twenty-five year on end. That's a canty story for ye!"
Prime saw that he was making no headway with the Macdougal, and after the pipes were out he tried to compose himself to sleep. Some time later on, Macdougal changed places with one of the paddlers, and, seizing her opportunity, Lucetta crept back to take her place beside Prime. They talked in whispers for a while, each trying to cheer the other. The morning of new and more threatening involvements was only a short night distant, and in the light of the month of hardship and mystery they could only fear the worst and hope for the best.
"You must try to get what sleep you can," Prime urged at the last, arranging the nearest blanket-roll for her back-support. "We shall be up against it again in the morning, and we both ought to have clear heads and a good, cold nerve. Snuggle down and shut your eyes. I am going to do the same after I've smoked another pipe."
He kept his word, dropping off shortly after the big canoe had entered a long straight reach with twinkling lights on either shore to prove that the moving world was once more coming within shouting distance. How long he slept he did not know, but when he awoke the canoe was stopped in midstream, and was lying stem to stern beside a larger craft, in the hold of which throbbing machinery seemed to be running idle.
Vaguely he gathered the impression that the canoe had been held up by the motorcraft; then he realized that a fierce altercation was going on between a big man who was leaning over the side to grip the gunwale of the birch bark and Under-sheriff Macdougal.
"I'll fight it out with you in any court you like, you stubborn blockhead!" Prime heard the big man bellow at Macdougal, and then the canoe was passed swiftly aft, somebody reached over the side and lifted him bodily into the cockpit of the motorboat, and a moment later he found Lucetta beside him, staring wildly and clinging to him as if he were her only hope.
"Wha-what are they doing to us now?" she quavered, and as she spoke the grumbling machinery in the depths below roared a louder note, and the big motor-craft cut a careening half-circle in midstream, leaving the birch-bark to dance and wabble in the converging area of the furrowing bow wave. By this time Prime had shaken himself fully awake. The two deck-hands who had pulled him and Lucetta aboard had disappeared, and the big man who had been bullying Macdougal was at the wheel. There was a single electric bulb in the centre of the cockpit awning, and by its light Prime had his first good look at the big steersman.
"Grider!" he exploded, taking a step toward the man at the wheel; and at that Miss Lucetta Millington drew herself up icily and turned her back.