"Shall we go, or stick it out?" asked Harvey, in a low voice.
"Why, it's a public house, and I don't believe he has a right to throw us out this way," said Henry Burns. "But it means a fight, sure, if we try to stay. I guess we better quit. It's his own place, and he's a rough man when he's angered."
Ruefully pulling on their sweaters—at least dry once more—and taking their paddles, which they had brought with them, from behind the door, they went out into the night, into the driving rain.
CHAPTER III
THE OLD MILL
The two boys, thus most unexpectedly evicted, stood disconsolately on the porch of the Half Way House, peering out into the storm. The character of it had changed somewhat, the rain driving fiercely now and then, with an occasional quick flaw of wind, instead of falling monotonously. And now there came a few rumblings of thunder, with faint flashes of lightning low in the sky.
"Well, Jack," said Henry Burns, at length, speaking with more than his customary deliberation, "wet night luck seems to be worse even than wet day luck. But who'd ever thought we'd have such tough luck as to run across Col. Witham up here, and a night like this? The boys never said anything about his being here."
"No—and he's got no right to put us out!" cried Harvey. "If you'll stand by, I'll go back into that office and tell him what I think of him."
"He knows that already," replied Henry Burns, coolly. "Wouldn't be any news to him. Say, I see a light way up on the hill to the left. Suppose we try them there. I wish we could see the road and the paths better, so as to know where we are."