There was contempt in Katherine’s tone now, and she meant it to be so.  If the man had a scrap of courage in him, she must fan it into active life, but if he were a poltroon, pure and simple, then she must do the best she could and leave the result.

To her delight, however, he lifted his head with an angry jerk.  “I will come, of course, but I shall sink in and you will have to pull me out again,” he said.

“Oh, you won’t sink very far, and I have you well roped!” she said cheerfully.  “But if you are able to spare him, let Phil dance across first, then he will be here to help me to pull if need be.”

“Go along, boy, I will follow,” said the man, and Katherine saw him breathing deep and hard as Phil bounded lightly across, reaching the boat without any mishap.

“Now is your turn; be quick!” she cried authoritatively, but her heart seemed to fairly stop beating as the poor man took his first step forward and reeled on the sinking oars.  “Quick!” she screamed, giving a sharp tug at the cord, which seemed to rouse him, for then he came on sharply enough.

Katherine, standing up in the boat, put out her hands to steady him when he came within reaching distance, and tried not to show how she shrank from his exceeding filthiness.

“There,” she said soothingly, as he sank in a limp heap in the seat she had cleared for him, “you are safe now, and you will soon get over the fright.”

“Thank you!” he murmured, but seemed incapable of further speech, and sat silent while they dragged up the bridge of oars, which had sunk out of sight.

“It was lucky you tied them together,” said Phil, when the oars were dragged up and the handles cleansed on the rushes.

“Yes, if I had not thought of doing that we might have whistled for our oars,” said Katherine, with a laugh that had a nervous ring.  The man sitting in the boat was, so far as she could see, a stranger, although he was so liberally coated with mud that it was exceedingly difficult to make any guesses about his identity, so there was nothing to account for the trembling which seized upon her as she looked at him.  It was a hard struggle getting the boat back into the channel, and her hands were so sore with hauling on the rope that it was positive torture to use the paddle.  The sun was pouring down with scorching brilliancy, and the flies gathered in black swarms about her face and head as she worked her way into the main channel again.  Arriving there, she leaned forward and spoke to the man, who sat silent and apparently dazed in the stern of the boat.

“Are you staying at Seal Cove, and at whose house?” she asked gently, feeling exceedingly pitiful for the poor fellow, who must have lost his life if she had not chosen to bring her boat through the weedy back channel that afternoon.

“No, I have a house at Roaring Water Portage; my name is Selincourt,” he answered.

The paddle which Katherine was stowing in the boat dropped from her hands with a clatter, and there was positive terror in her eyes as she gasped:  “You are Mr. Selincourt, the Mr. Selincourt?”