Worse than this, it
had floated off the boat, which he had carelessly forgotten to
secure, and drifted it up the river, at first under cover of the
trees, afterwards more ostentatiously into mid-channel.
Mr. Fogo rushed up the patch of shingle until brought to a standstill
by its sudden declension into deep water. There was no help for it.
Not a soul was in sight. He divested himself rapidly of his clothes,
piled them in a neat little heap beyond reach of the tide, and then
with considerable spirit plunged into the flood and struck out in
pursuit of the truant.
CHAPTER XIV.
OF A LADY OF SENSIBILITY THAT, BEING AWKWARDLY PLACED, MIGHT EASILY
HAVE SET MATTERS RIGHT, BUT DID NOT: WITH MUCH BESIDE.
It is hardly necessary by this time to inform my readers that Miss
Priscilla Limpenny was a lady of sensibility. We have already seen
her obey the impulse of the heart rather than the cool dictates of
judgment: her admiration of natural beauty she has herself confessed
more than once during the voyage up the river. But lest more than a
due share of this admiration should be set down to patriotism, I wish
to put it on record that she possessed to an uncommon degree an
appreciative sense of the poetic side of Nature. She was familiar
with the works of Mrs.
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