mouth to call encouragement, when a
low "Who is it?" floated across the water.

"Eleanor, is that you? It's I--Betty Wales!" shrieked Betty.

Katherine nodded her head in silent token of "I told you so," and slid
back among the bushes to recuperate and await developments.

For the end was not yet. Eleanor was evidently far down toward the dam,
close to the opposite bank. It was hard for her to hear Betty, and still
harder for Betty to hear her. Her voice sounded faint and far off, and
she seemed to be paralyzed with fear and quite incapable of further
effort. When Betty begged her to paddle right across and began lighting
matches in reckless profusion to show her the way, Eleanor simply
repeated, "I can't, I can't," in dull, dispirited monotone.

"Shall--I--come--for--you?" shouted Betty.

"You can't," returned Eleanor again.

"Non--sense!" shrieked Betty and then stood still on the wharf,
apparently weighing Eleanor's last opinion.

"Go ahead," called Katherine in muffled tones from above.

Betty did not answer.

"Thinks I'm another owl, I suppose," muttered Katherine, and limped down
the bank to the wharf, frightening the nervous, overwrought Betty almost
out of her wits at first, and then vastly relieving her by taking the
entire direction of affairs into her own competent hands.

"You go right ahead. It's the only way, and it's perfectly easy in a
heavy boat. That canoe might possibly go down with the current, but a
big boat wouldn't. Rachel and I tried it last week, when the river was
higher. Now cross straight over and feel along the bank until you get to
her. Then beach the canoe and come back the same way. Give me some
matches. I'll manage that part of it and then retire,--unless you'd
rather be the one to wait here."

"No, I'll go," answered Betty eagerly, vanishing into the boat-house
after a pair of oars.

"She must be hanging on to something on shore," went on Katherine, when
Betty reappeared, "and she's lost her nerve and doesn't dare to let go.
If you can't get her into your boat, I'll come; but somebody really
ought to stay here. I had no idea the fog was so thick. Hurry now and
cross straight over. You're sure you're not afraid?"

"Quite sure." Betty was off, splashing her oars nervously through the
still water, wrapped in the mist, whispering over and over Katherine's
last words, "Hurry and go straight. Hurry, hurry, go straight across."

When she reached the other shore she called agai