CHAPTER VII.
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
Meanwhile, Mr.Jack Everson found matters exceedingly interesting.
When he informed his friends that he would rejoin them in the course of a few minutes the possibility of anything interfering with his promise did not occur to him.

That danger threatened every member of the little company may be set down as self-evident, but what could happen to disturb him in the brief interval spent in running up the slope, dashing into the house and back again to the river's side?
Such were his thoughts as he entered the shadows and hurriedly approached the front veranda.

Although he had reached this spot within the preceding twenty-four hours the evening meal and the preparations for flight had given him sufficient knowledge of the interior to remove all difficulty in going straight to the table in the dining-room and taking the forgotten revolver therefrom.
The first tingle of misgiving came to the young man when he was close to the porch and about to step upon it.

He remembered that it was himself who had extinguished the lamp on the table as the three were about to pass into the hall and out of doors, but lo! a light was shining from that very room.

What could it mean?
"That's deuced queer," he thought, coming to an abrupt halt; "I screwed down that lamp and blew into the chimney in the orthodox fashion, so it couldn't have been that I unconsciously left the wick burning." At this juncture he made another significant discovery.