.

The Empty Cave.
Through ten months of the year a child of ten could wade the Asper but now its deep roaring that set the ground quivering under Barry gave him perfect assurance of safety.

Not one of that posse would attempt the crossing, he felt, but he slipped back through the shrubbery close to the bank to make sure.

He was in time to see Mark Retherton give a command with gestures that sent reluctant guns into the holsters.

Fists were brandished toward the green covert on the farther side of the river, so close, such an unreachable distance.