Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/106

96 "I suppose the dam could not break away?" the girl remarked.

"I should hope not. The flood would swallow us up in an instant, like rats in a hole. But there is no fear of that," he said with a laugh.

Further on between the sheer walls the pair proceeded. A head, unobserved, appeared above the works.

"Yes, 'like rats in a hole,'" Malduke muttered. "Into 'the valley of death' they are wandering. How easily I could do it—if it was only him! If she were out of the way. Why so?"

He wiped his brow, on which drops of perspiration were hanging ; blood appeared on his palm.

"She struck the blow, and walks there, tripping beside him—the smooth-faced fool. It shall be their last lovers' walk. She's brought it on herself!"

Picking up a long iron rod, the man stepped on to a tree that had fallen into the lake, and plunged the bar into the soft side of the dam just below the water-level. Entering a short distance it stuck in the damp loam. Seizing a heavy maul that lay on the bank, he drove the bar through the bank until it protruded on the other side. Working the rod backwards and forwards, Malduke succeeded in withdrawing it a few feet; but further out it would not come. The sound of a footstep on the bank caused him to steal along the dam, and hide himself in the scrub on the hillside.

Willie, who had returned from his flower quest, had caught Travers' remark as the lovers descended into the gorge: "We should be drowned like rats." To the child's horror water was even now spurting from a hole in the narrow embankment. Every instant the stream increased in volume. Willie cooeyed and called, but the distant pair could not hear. Throwing himself into