“Let us go the longer way,” pleaded Phil, who did not care for the solemn stretches of green swamp on either side of the backwater.

But Katherine had been resting on her oars and looking round, catching sight as she did so of a fishing boat, with its brown sails set, making for the river mouth.  With a fluttering of her pulses she told herself that this was most likely the fleet boat which had taken the new owner out to Akimiski, and was now bringing him back.  If this were the case, her little row boat and the fisher would enter the river channel by the fish sheds side by side.  She would be hot and untidy with the vigorous exercise of rowing, while Miss Selincourt, cool and calm, would gaze at her with lofty disdain, regarding her merely as a rough working girl.  This was not to be endured for a moment, and, setting her hands with a tighter grip on the oars, Katherine said decidedly:  “We will go through the swamps to-day.  I want to get home as quickly as I can, for there are so many things to see to, and a lot of booking to do.”

Phil resigned himself to the inevitable with a rather dour face, and there was silence between them for quite ten minutes, as Katherine, forced by the narrowness of the way, ceased rowing, and, shipping her oars, picked up a paddle which formed part of the boat’s equipment, and commenced to paddle her way through the short cut.

“What’s that?” asked Phil sharply, jerking up his head to listen again for a sound which would not have caught his ear at all if he had not been so silent just then.

“I heard nothing,” said Katherine, pausing in her work, but holding the boat steady by planting her paddle in a group of rushes and holding it fast.  “What kind of sound was it, Phil?”

“Something like a fox makes when it is caught in a trap,” replied Phil.  Then he cried eagerly:  “There it is, and I believe it is a man!  Ahoy there! where are you, and what is wrong?”

“Help, help!” cried a voice from somewhere, only the trouble was to know where to locate it.

“Yes, we will help you, only we can’t think where you are; can’t you let us know?” called Katherine, sending her voice in a reassuring shout over the reaches of treacherous green.

“I am here, holding on to some rushes,” the voice said, and Katherine fairly gasped with amazement to find the submerged one so close at hand; for the patch of rushes to which she was holding the boat was the only one anywhere near, and a little ridge of solid ground connected it with the river bank, which was perhaps forty yards away.

“Be careful to keep calling out now,” she said, preparing to force the boat out of its channel and into the liquid mud of the fatal green meadow.

“Here, here, here!” said the voice, sounding now so thick and hoarse that Katherine at once decided it must be one of the fishermen who had risked his life on the treacherous green of the swamp, although she wondered that anyone could have lived at Seal Cove for a week and not known of the danger that lay in the swamps.