ner or
later."--Then stopping suddenly he exclaimed, "Hullo! we're stuck, I
declare! look at that!"

Robinette turned and saw that their boat was now scarcely surrounded
with water at all. On every side, as if the flanks of some great whale
were upheaving from below, there appeared stretches of glistening mud.
Just in front of them, where there still was a channel of water, was
an upstanding rock. "Shall we row quickly there?" she cried. "Then
perhaps we can get out and pull the boat to the other side, where
there is more water. What has happened?"

"Oh, something not unusual," said Lavendar grimly, "that I'm a fool,
and the sea-tide has ebbed, as tides have been known to do before. I'm
afraid a man doesn't watch tides when he has a companion like you! Now
we're left high, but not at all dry, as you see, till the tide
turns."

By a swift stroke or two he managed to propel their craft as far as
the rock. They scrambled up on it, and then he tried to haul the boat
around the miniature islet; but the more he hauled, the quicker the
water seemed to run away, and the deeper the wretched thing stuck in
the mud. He jumped in again, and made an effort to push her off with
an oar; meanwhile Robinette nearly fell off the rock in her efforts to
get the head of the boat around towards the current again, and making
a frantic plunge into the ooze, sank above her ankles in an instant.
Lavendar caught hold of her and helped her to scramble back into the
boat. "It's all right; only my skirt wet, and one shoe gone!" she
panted. "Now, what are we to do?" She spread out her hands in dismay,
and looked down at her draggled mud-stained skirt, her little feet,
one shoeless and both covered with mud and slime. "What an object I
shall be to meet Aunt de Tracy's eye, when, if ever, it does light on
me again! Meanwhile it seems as if we might be here for some hours.
The boat is just settling herself into the mud bank, like a rather
tired fat old woman into an armchair, and pray, Mr. Lavendar, what do
you propose to do? as Talleyrand said to the lady who told him she
couldn't bear it."

Lavendar looked about them; the main bed of the river was fifty yards
away; between it and them was now only an expanse of mud.

"It's perfectly hopeless," he said, "the best thing we can do is to
beget some philosophy."

"Which at any moment we would exchange for a foot of water," she
interpolated.

"We must just sit here and wait for the tide. Shall it