The Price

step was the mailing of the letter to Mr. Galbraith. Many times during the evening she wrought herself up to the plunging point, only

urged that delay was little less culpable than refusal, since every hour gave the criminal an added chance of escape. The logic was unanswerable, and trembling lest the implacable inward monitor should pr

tle and the jangling of the engine-room bells warned her that the Belle Julie was approaching a landing. Remember

ce. This final pause soon proved to be the severest trial of all. The minutes dragged leaden-winged; and to sit quietly in the silence and sol

he shelving river bank and the sleeping hamlet beyond. The furnace doors were open, and the red glare of the fires quickened the darkness under the beam of the electric into lu

of freight. The mate had left his outlook upon the hurricane-deck and was down among the men, hastening them with

stage and dropped from its shore end. One of them fell clumsily, tried to rise, and sank back into the shadow; but the other scrambled up the steep bank and loosened the half-hitches

stead of obeying, the man ran back and went on h

s disabled in some way, and that the other was trying to lift him. While she looked, the engine-r

swiftly to the mooring-post, took a double turn of the trailing hawser around it and stood by until the straining line snubbed the steamer's bow to the shore. Then, deftly casting off

out in sheer enthusiasm when it was done. Then, in the light from the furnace doors,

no longer; she would.... The harsh voice of the mate, dominating the noise of the machinery and the churning of the paddle-wheels, drew her irresistibly to the rail. She could not hear what M'Grath was sayin

bility that capture and arrest were deferred only from landing to landing, a little abuse, more or less, counted as nothing. But he was gri

n the stream of abuse gave him a chance. "You let the man alone. He couldn't help it.

tal kick at the crippled n

, angrily. "If you've got to take

iver at the impact. But the blow did not land. Griswold saw it coming and swerved the necessary body-breadth. The result was a demonstration of a simple theorem in dynamics. M'G

elle Julie was forging ahead at full speed, and if the mate did not drown at once,

ngling arm around the big man's neck and strove to sink with him so that the wheel might pass over them. He was only partly successful. The mate was terror-crazed and fought blindly. There was no time for trick or stratagem, and when the thunder of the wheel roared overh

a wide circle in mid-stream and the search-light picked up the castaways. From that to placing the Belle Julie so that the two bits of human flotsam could be hauled in over t

ged aboard, the big Irishman still unconscious, and the rescuer in th

stopping at the clerk's office when she flew back to her state-room with the letter to Mr. Galbraith hidden i