Panting and
exhausted, he paused just long enough to push the canoe out into
the stream again, and then, with his rifle and pack in his hands,
turned his small tear-stained face toward the wooded slope
beyond. As he toiled up it in the wide silence of the dawn, a
mournful wind burst out of the north, filling the air about him
with withered leaves and the dead branches of trees.
CHAPTER VIII
ON THE RIVER
Betty stood under a dripping umbrella in the midst of a drenching
downpour, her boxes and trunks forming a neat pyramid of
respectable size beside her. She was somewhat perturbed in
spirit, since they contained much elaborate finery all in the
very latest eastern fashion, spoils that were the fruit of a
heated correspondence with Tom, who hadn't seemed at all alive to
the fact that Betty was nearly eighteen and in her own right a
young woman of property. A tarpaulin had been thrown over the
heap, and with one eye on it and the other on the stretch of
yellow canal up which they were bringing the fast packet Pioneer,
she was waiting impatiently to see her belongings transferred to
a place of safety.
Just arrived by the four-horse coach that plyed regularly between
Washington and Georgetown, she had found the long board platform
beside the canal crowded with her fellow passengers, their number
augmented by those who delight to share vicariously in travel and
to whom the departure of a stage or boat was a matter of urgent
interest requiring their presence, rain or shine.
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