"No, you won't, Jack Barnes!" she exclaimed resolutely, her pretty blue eyes wide with alarm. "Didn't you hear them say they'd fill you full of lead? They had guns and everything. Oh, dear! oh, dear! isn't it horrid?"
"The worst of it is they've cut us off from the river," he said miserably. "If I could have reached the boat ahead of them they never could have caught us. I could distance that old raft in a mile."
"I know you could, dear," she cried, looking with frantic admiration upon his broad shoulders and brawny bare arms. "But it is out of the question now."
"Never mind, sweetheart; don't let it fuss you so. It will turn out all right, I know it will."
"Oh, I can't run any farther," she gasped despairingly.
"Poor little chap! Let me carry you?"
"You big ninny!"
"We are at least three miles from your house, dear, and surrounded by deadly perils. Can you climb a tree?"
"I can—but I won't!" she refused flatly, her cheeks very red.
"Then I fancy we'll have to keep on in this manner. It's a confounded shame—the whole business. Just as I thought everything was going so smoothly, too. It was all arranged to a queen's taste—nothing was left undone. Bracken was to meet us at his uncle's boathouse down there, and—good heavens, there was a shot!"