s from which I have been called to rescue
you, this might have proved the most serious."

"I don't see how," said both Glen and Binney.

Winn knew, and he smiled a little self-complacent smile as he
reflected, "This is a little worse than any mess I ever got into."

"You would have seen quickly enough if you had tried to spend this
money," said Billy Brackett, "for you would undoubtedly have been
arrested on the charge of counterfeiting. Those same fellows put Winn
here in that fix a short time since, besides getting away with a
thousand dollars' worth of wheat that he had in charge, and now they
have come very near serving you the same trick."

Here Winn's smile faded away rather suddenly, while Glen exclaimed,

"Do you mean to say that these bills are counterfeit?"

"I do," replied Billy Brackett; "and if you doubt it, take them to the
first bank you come across and ask the cashier."

"But the City Marshal took some just like them," argued Glen, catching
at the only straw of hope in sight.

"So much the worse for the City Marshal, and I for one shall let him
suffer the consequences. He had no business to accept a reward for
performing a simple act of duty, in the first place; and in the second,
the readiness with which he delivered this raft to the first claimants
who came along makes it look very much as though he could be bribed."

"Well," said Glen, in a despairing tone, "if what you say is true, and
I know it must be, we are in a fix. That hundred dollars was to pay
our expenses to New Orleans; now I don't know how we shall get there."

"New Orleans! Are you bound for New Orleans?"

"Yes, and that's how we happened to be here, and to find this raft.
You see, my father, General Elting, you know, is going to Central
America to make a survey for the Nicaragua Canal, and Binney and I are
to go with him. The party is to sail from New Orleans some time in
January, but he had to go to New York first. As there were a lot of
instruments and heavy things to be sent to New Orleans, he thought it
best to ship them by boat; and as we wanted to take the river trip, he
let us come in charge of them. We knew we should have to transfer from
the Ohio River boat at this point, but we didn't know until we got here
that we must wait three days for the New Orleans packet. As there
wasn't anything else to do, we have put in the time hunting and
fishing, and last evening we ran across this abandoned raft about a
mile