first time.
“’Case, ef you hev, I’ll slip back inter that thar room with it an’ lay it open on the floor, so that when Sam Turner hev come ter himself he’ll ’low ez how you cut them ropes an’ got away ’thout anybody holping ye.”
Browning took out his pocketknife, opened the biggest blade, and placed it in her hand.
“I’m ’bleeged ter ye!” she said.
“And I’m obliged to you, Nell – Miss Thornton!” declared Browning, with an uncommon warmth of feeling. “Likely I should have been killed if you hadn’t come to my assistance. And at such a fearful risk! I owe you my life!”
She was about to turn away, but faced around abruptly and looked him squarely in the eyes.
“You ain’t nary revnoo spy, air ye, come hyar ter hunt down the moonshiners?”
“No!” said Browning, with sturdy emphasis. “I am not! Nor are any of my friends. I came back to your house because I was lost.”
Her lips parted in a smile.
“I knowed you warn’t,” she asserted.
Then, before Bruce could say anything more, or even bid her good-by, she leaped away and hastened back toward the cabin.
The racking pains, which Bruce had temporarily forgotten, shot again through his head and shoulder as he saw her vanish, and he turned toward the mountain with a groan.
But ever, as he toiled on over the wild path, slipping, sliding, groaning, he thought of Nell Thornton, going back into that room, over the body of the slumbering rifleman, to place the pocketknife on the floor by the side of the cut ropes, and his heart throbbed in sympathy with her great peril.
CHAPTER VII – BY THE WATERS OF LAKE LILY
“It’s a trick to enable them to get out of the match!” asserted Ward Hammond, with a stinging sneer. “All this pretense of making a search is the veriest humbug! The idea that one of their number would wander away into the woods, or drown himself in the lake while out of his head from a little fever, is the greatest rot that any one ever tried to foist on the public.”
A considerable concourse of people had gathered on the margin of Lake Lily to witness the swimming match announced to come off that morning at nine o’clock sharp. They were seated on camp stools, on wooden benches, and on the rocks and grass. The boathouse of the Lake Lily Athletic Club was filled with them.
And now the rumor had gone forth that Frank Merriwell and his friends of the Lake Lily Club would not enter the contest because they were organizing to search for one of their number who had been strangely missing since the previous afternoon.
“It’s a clear backdown,” declared Hammond, walking up to a group of his Glendale friends. “They know they dare not meet us, and they’re simply making that an excuse. I’ll bet big money that, if the truth were known, the fellow they say is lost is hidden away somewhere in one of their cottages.”
Merriwell’s party, with Colson, Tetlow and others, came out of a cottage at that moment. They wore a sober, serious air. They had been talking the thing over, and were intending to institute another search through the woods and along the shores of the lake, though they had already made a number of such searches. Merriwell was to speak to the people, and explain why it was they could not enter the swimming match, and was to announce that if nothing was heard of Browning by noon, the lake would then be dragged for his body.
But scarcely were they out of the cottage, when Harry Rattleton swung his cap and gave a great cheer.
“There he is!” he whooped. “Just in sight, coming over that rise!”
He broke away from the crowd and ran swiftly to meet Browning, who had lost his way again, in spite of the moonlight, and had been forced to remain in the woods all night.
The story that Browning had strolled across the mountains for a walk, and had been assaulted and robbed by highwaymen, spread like wildfire.
It was not started by Browning’s friends, but when they found it current, they did not try to correct it, choosing to let it go at that, instead of giving the true account of his experiences.
Ward Hammond’s boasting came to a sudden termination when he saw Browning return, and knew that he would have to swim against the youths he had been so maliciously maligning.
It was ten o’clock, an hour later than the time fixed, when Frank Merriwell and Sep Colson, who had been selected by the members of the Lake Lily Club to uphold the club honors in the swimming match, came out of their dressing-room in the boathouse.
Ward Hammond and Dan Matlock, the chosen champions of the other club, were already at the starting point, and the spectators, who had been kept so long in waiting, were growing impatient at the delay.
“Oi’m bettin’ thot yez kin bate thim fellies out av soight, Frankie, me b’y!” cried Barney, jubilantly. “Thot Hommond sint up his rooster crowin’ a bit too soon, so he did, as he’ll be foindin’ out moighty quick, now!”
“I’m sure we’ll do our best, Barney,” promised Merriwell, touched by the Irish lad’s loyalty.
“We can always depend on you for that, Merry!” said Rattleton. “We want you to beat Hammond worse than you did in the shooting. And you can do it, too!”
“I don’t doubt he’s safe enough to do that,” grumbled Bruce, who had come down to the boathouse in spite of his aching head and generally used-up condition. “But as for me! Ugh! I wouldn’t leap into that water for wages. It makes me shiver to look at it!”
Rattleton gave a wink and thrust his hands into his pockets. Gallup and Mulloy imitated his example, and when their hands came out, they were seen to contain each a number of white capsules.
“Take another dose of quineen, and keep off that chill,” said Rattleton, extending the capsules toward Bruce.
“Gullup daown another dost of quinine an’ keep off that gol darn chill!” cried Ephraim, pushing the capsules into Browning’s face.
“Swally anither dose av quoinin an’ kape aff thot ager,” advised Barney, doing the same.
Browning arose to his feet and shook his fist at them in mock rage, whereupon they dodged backward and made a feint of swallowing the capsules themselves.
“Mistah Browning’ll make you have wuss dan de fevah an’ chilluns,” warned Toots. “I’s su’mised dat Mistah Browning ain’t feelin’ berry good dis mawnin – no, sar!”
Suddenly Browning was seen to straighten up and stare toward the slope where the benches had been placed.
“There she is,” he whispered, nodding his head in that direction.
“She! Who? What are you talking about?” demanded Jack Diamond.
“Nell Thornton! Don’t look at her right now, and all at once. But you can see her on the end of that farthest bench. The slim girl, with the cotton dress and calico sunbonnet. Heavens! I’m glad to see her, for I know now that she succeeded in pulling the wool over the eyes of that villain, Sam Turner!”
“And she has come here for no other purpose than to let you see her, so that you
