elf on the bank of the river--and Dingley gave a sharp
exclamation.

"They've hit me, but it's the same arm as before," he growled. "They got
no right to fire at me. It's not the law. Don't stop," he added, quickly,
as he saw her half turn round.

Now there were loud voices on the shore. Old Tom Sanger was threatening to
shoot the first man that fired again, and he would have kept his word.

"Who you firin' at?" he shouted. "That's my niece, Jinny Long, an' you let
that boat alone. This ain't the land o' lynch law. Dingley ain't escaped
from gaol. You got no right to fire at him."

"No one ever went down Dog Nose Rapids at night," said the Man from
Clancey's, whose shot had got Dingley's arm. "There ain't a chance of them
doing it. No one's ever done it."

The two were in the roaring rapids now, and the canoe was jumping through
the foam like a race-horse. The keen eyes on the bank watched the canoe
till it was lost in the half-gloom below the first rapids, and then they
went slowly back to Tom Sanger's house.

"So there'll be no wedding to-morrow," said the Man from Clancey's.

"Funerals, more likely," drawled another.

"Jinny Long's in that canoe, an' she ginerally does what she wants to,"
said Tom Sanger, sagely.

"Well, we done our best, and now I hope they'll get to Bindon," said
another.

Sanger passed the jug to him freely. Then they sat down and talked of the
people who had been drowned in Dog Nose Rapids, and of the last wedding in
the mountains.

III

It was as the Man from Clancey's had said, no one had ever gone down Dog
Nose Rapids in the night-time, and probably no one but Jenny Long would
have ventured it. Dingley had had no idea what a perilous task had been
set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids
floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the
terror of tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward like a
snake through the swift, smooth current which would sweep them into the
vast caldron, that he realized the terrible hazard of the enterprise.

The moon was directly overhead when they drew upon the race of rocks and
fighting water and foam. On either side only the shadowed shore, forsaken
by the races which had hunted and roamed and ravaged here--not a light,
nor any sign of life, or the friendliness of human presence to make their
isolation less complete, their danger, as it were, shared by
fellow-mortals. Bright as the moon