Then--just a little hoist, and, if you'll not worry but keep still, nothing's easier." As he spoke, Faircloth stooped, lightly and with no apparent exertion lifting her high, so that--she clasping his neck as instructed--the main weight of her body rested upon his shoulder.

With his right arm he held her just above the waist, his left arm below her knees cradling her.
"Now rest quiet," he said.

"Know you are safe and think only of comfortable things--among them this one, if you care to, that for once in my life I am content." Yet over such yielding and treacherous ground, upward to the crown of the ridge and downward to the river, progress could not be otherwise than slow.

Twilight, and that of the dreariest and least penetrable, overtook them before Faircloth, still carrying the white-clothed figure, reached the jetty.

Here, at the bottom of the wooden steps he set Damaris down, led her up them and handed her into the boat--tied up to, and the tide being at the flood, now little below the level of the staging..