Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/244

 that when she spoke again he listened attentively, wondering. Somewhere—sometime—he could not just remember.

Thus they talked, good friends, now, and with perfect understanding.

"We'll want to start out at dawn," he suggested, and she admitted that, with the remark:

"Yes—and it's late now—I think you'll find your room ready."

"Which one?" he asked.

"The port side. You find the light at the head of the bunk."

In the morning, as soon as they could see clearly, they went on down the river.

"He couldn't go more than forty or fifty miles a day," she declared. "But that might mean two hundred miles—or if he floated nights, four hundred miles—I told him—why! I told him I'd meet him down in Spanish Moss Bend. Or at Salem Landing—I just happened to remember."

"Is that the way you remember your dates?" Urleigh ventured, and she laughed but made no answer.

Murdong had hidden his trail from their inexperienced eyes. They asked shantyboaters blunt questions, and the river people, suspecting that Murdong was a fugitive, and needed a good lie in his favour, sent them up and down, so that they ran down to