“We’ll meet again,” St. Pierre continued, before the spy could utter a word, “and that girl,” and he pointed to Effie, who had recovered and was clinging to her lover’s arm, “and that girl,” he repeated, “shall listen to the groans I shall wring from your heart, powerless to help you. I shall hunt you with a vindictiveness to which the work of the bitterest vendetta of the Old World can not be compared. Mark my words, Mark Morgan; take the girl and go.”
As Mitre St. Pierre finished he stepped aside and waved his hand toward the slumbering river.
“Come, Effie,” said the spy, taking the young girl’s hand. “If it needed but an effort for your preservation to transform that man into a fiend, then it were best that his roof shelters you no longer.”
St. Pierre scowled at this, and as the spy darted past with his pale flower, the sound of quick footsteps fell upon his ears.
“Mark, listen,” whispered Effie.
“I hear them, girl,” he said, without pausing. “They are British soldiers who have discovered the major’s escape. They must not find me.”
He sprung to the water’s edge, where he suddenly paused, and, with a startling exclamation, gazed bewilderingly around.
“Where’s my boat?”
The interrogative bubbled unsummoned to his lips.
His canoe was gone—gone from the tufts of grass to which he had securely moored it!