Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/209

 "Sho!" one evil-faced little creature had sniffed, "nobody'll eveh throw sparklers ovehboard. No, indeedy! What she'd do, she'd have a pal, and her pal'd get to go with 'em!"

The shot had struck home. Despite her held-taut composure Delia felt that a little start she gave had betrayed her secret—or enough of it to let the truth be known. Her heart ached when she thought of the young man who had unquestioningly done her bidding, not knowing what Pandora's Box she had left in his charge.

"I must warn him!" she whispered to herself. "I mustn't let him go down this dreadful river unwarned! I ought to have told him he'd be in danger—someone would watch him."

Accordingly, she scurried down the river, trying to find the man whom she had sent down to hide out. She had told him that. If he should find the gems, then he would understand.

"Don't trust any one," she had warned him. "Hide—hideout!"

She kept her motor at half speed, and steered by the steamer lights down bends and over crossings. Carrying no light on her own boat, she was invisible. She travelled till dawn, and then sought the mouth of a bayou which was deep enough for her to enter. Around the first turn in the bayou