"Not much fear of them, if you are half sharp. But, let me see. It might not be a bad idea if she changed clothes with some other girl before she started West. One squaw is so like another in white folks' eyes. It might turn pursuit in a wrong direction while she is getting away."
"Ouff," Paul grunted again, but nothing more. The two dusky shadows swung silently on the dim bosom of the waters, whitening now beneath the glimmer of the rising moon.
"See here, Paul," Ralph said at last; "I shall be better than my word after all. Here are ten dollars in hand, for you. Come round to my office as soon as the work is done and your squaw safely off, and I will pay you your fifty dollars. Now land us. We shall take first train to the city. We must not be seen together, so will take different cars. Wait for me in the shadow of the cabstand, and I will go up town with you and point out the house."
"Ouff," again was the only answer, but as Paul's long arm stretched out to snatch the money, and under a deft stroke or two of the paddle the canoe shot swiftly down stream to the landing, Ralph understood that the bargain was struck.
CHAPTER V.
[FIDÈLE].
It was a day or two later, in the early forenoon. The air was stagnant, breathlessly awaiting the thunderstorm whose cumulus vapour masses were already drifting up from the distant horizon; though as yet the sun blazed in cloudless fervour overhead, and the world lay panting in the intolerable heat. The very light was sultry, and Mary Selby had drawn close the blinds, to shut it out where she lay on a sofa trying to stir the thick stillness into motion with her fan; but the air was heavy with heat and she felt too faint for the exertion.
She was dropping asleep when Lisette entered with a basket of May apples. They looked so cool in their green pith-like husks that she could not refrain from pulling one or two asunder to reach the blob of fragrant pulp within, tasting and awakening from her langour, before she asked where they had come from. The maid answered that a squaw without was offering them for sale, and the mistress had then to rise and go into an adjoining room to find her purse.
She took the basket in her lap and began to pull open the fruit, separating the small eatable portions from the pod-like rind. "What a feast for Edith!" she said, when she had done; and she called to Lisette to bring the baby.
Lisette appeared looking hot and troubled. "She had not seen Miss Edith," she said, since she brought the fruit to her mistress--"supposed Cato must have got her. She had been looking for the squaw to give her her money, but could not find her. She thought at first she might be prowling round the house looking for something to steal, but she had looked everywhere now, even in the wood shed and coal cellar, but could not see a sign."