the ladder, "could have foreseen it but me. I just want you to know that
politics is absolutely sidetracked now. Before I'll let this deal of
ours fall through, I'll see Hare licked till they can't scrape him
together afterward with a fine-tooth comb."
It was deadly quiet on the yacht after Peter left. At two o'clock Varney
went down to a solitary luncheon. At quarter past, followed by the
reproachful gaze of McTosh, he came out again. In the pit of his stomach
reposed a great emptiness, but it was not hunger. He felt restless,
high-strung, all made of nerves. He wanted to do something of a violent,
physical sort, the more grueling the better; and his task was to loll in
an easy-chair under a pretty awning and inspect the landscape.
The port side of the _Cypriani_ was jammed as close into the island as
the science of navigation made possible. Varney went over to the other
side and sat down to wait. In front of him, a hundred yards away, the
western bank rose abruptly from the water's edge, reaching here and
there to loftiness. There were woods upon it, thick and silent, which
looked as if the defiling hand of man had never entered there. At his
back was the still, empty little island; at either side stretched the
deserted river.
He thought it as lonely a spot as could have been found in a day's
journey, but a moment later he discovered his mistake. It was suddenly
borne in upon him that the tall, thin object which nestled so closely
among the trees a mile to the south that it was scarcely distinguishable
from them, was in reality the spire of some church; and he knew that he
was much closer to his kind than he had thought.
And then, in time, he noticed other things. Before a great while, he saw
a boat with one person in it--a woman he thought--put out from the shore
at about where the village must be and start across to the other bank.
And later, as the afternoon wore on, he caught sight of a canoe, a few
hundred yards upstream, rocking idly down with the current. An
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