“The best?” she cried, “and you boast of that? You!”
“God forbid,” I said, breaking in on her speech. “If there were more I could do, I would do it and gladly, but—”
“Don’t! Don’t!” she said, pain in her tone. And she turned her horse’s head and plodded down the side-road in silence. I followed.
Still I was uneasy. The night, the loneliness, the scene, all chilled me; and this tardy suggestion, this change of plan at the last moment had an odd look. However I reflected that I had nothing to lose; the loss was hers if we were not in time. And though a one-armed man in an old and rotten ferry boat—so I pictured the craft we were to enter—is not very happily placed, if she did not see this, I could not raise the point.
My perplexity grew, however, when twenty minutes’ riding failed to bring us to the river, though the road had by this time sunk to the marshes, and ran deep and foundrous, lapped on either side by sullen pools. The time came when I drew rein—I would go no farther; the air was laden with ague, I felt it in my bones. “I don’t think we are right,” I said.
“You would do so much!” she cried bitterly. “But you won’t do this for me.”
“I will do anything that will be of service, Miss Wilmer,” I said firmly, “but to waste our time here will not be of serivce.”
“What will?” she wailed. “Will anything?” Then, stopping me as I was about to answer, “There! a light!” she cried. “Do you see? There is a light before us! We can inquire.”
She was right, there was a light. Nay, when we had advanced a few yards we saw that there were two lights, which proceeded from the windows of some building. I was grateful for the discovery, grateful for anything that put an end to the contest between us; and “Thank God!” I said as cheerfully as I could. “Now we shall learn where we are, and we can decide what to do.”
“More, there is the river,” she added; and a moment later I, too, caught the gleam of moonlight on a wide water, that flowed on the farther side, as it seemed to me, of the spot whence the lights issued.