"Stop! stop! stop!" screamed Barbara, but with no result. She half arose in the canoe, glancing with horror from the boy's resolute face to the muzzle of the pistol.
"If you don't stop, Robert, I will throw myself overboard this minute!" she vowed.
The terror in her face convinced him. He sullenly drew in his paddle, laid it down in the canoe, folded his arms, and looked off over the western hills, as if scornful of all that might take place.
In a few seconds the boat came up alongside of the drifting canoe, the oars were drawn in, and strong hands laid hold upon the gunwale. There were some awful moments of silence, broken only by Barbara's sobbing and the splashing of waves on the boat and the canoe. The owner of the boat, a gaunt farmer from Westings Landing, a few miles down the river, who had not been initiated into the mystery, looked on in discreet astonishment. This was indeed a strange situation in which to see the grandson of Lady Gault. At last Barbara, to whom suspense was hideous, broke out.
"Oh, do say something!" she wailed. Indeed, neither Doctor John nor Doctor Jim knew just what to say. They were embarrassed. But the child was right. Somebody had to say something. By interchange of quick glances the lot fell to Doctor John.
"Well, this is pretty gallivanting, running away with a young man,—carrying him off in your aunt's canoe!" said Doctor John.
Barbara's eyes opened very wide.
"I never!" she cried, indignantly.
"As for you, Bobby Gault," interposed Doctor Jim, severely, and in a tone that made Robert feel himself hatefully young, "I cannot comprehend how you should come to be mixed up in this affair. I know well what my friend, Richard Gault, your lamented father, with his nice notions of honour, would have thought of such an escapade." (Robert's father and mother had died within a few days of each other, by an epidemic of typhus, when the boy was only five years old.) "But I shall lay the matter before your good grandmother, and your uncle, who will doubtless deal with you as you deserve."
Robert shut his lips tight and eyed the speaker proudly; but Barbara made reply in her vehement way.