Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/42

 trying to discover the source of that menace, but it was a long time before she saw anything that suggested a reason for the sudden change from friendly solitude to dreaded company.

Something seemed to warn her that she was under observation—that something was watching her. She looked around impatiently, and she stepped into her boat to get her binoculars to scrutinize the surroundings. As she started back on to the bow deck she paused within the doorway.

"Don't go outside to look!" something said to her, and accordingly, she obeyed the voice and began her scrutiny from under the shadow of her own cabin.

She looked ahead to port and to starboard, and astern. She looked up and down and then away astern. Miles and miles up the river, across the low edge of a wide sandbar, she picked up a spot upon the water, and when she had found the exact focus for her glasses, that spot resolved itself into a boat, into a gasolene cruiser. Delia felt a little thrill at discovering that craft. It was not a pleasurable thrill, nor yet a distinctly unpleasant one. It seemed to answer the feeling of menace which had driven her from comfort.

"There!" her mind seemed to say.

Instead of going out to sit on the deck, she prepared a meal on the three-burner oil stove in her