He piloted her to a narrow strip of turf that bordered the Wye, found a path that ran close to a small wood, and soon they were in a road. There was slight excuse for arm-holding now, but Cynthia seemed to think that her frills still needed safeguarding, so he did not withdraw the hand which clung to her elbow. A light in a laborer's cottage promised information; he knocked at the door, which was not opened, but a voice cried: "Who is it? What do you want?" "Tell me the nearest way to the Symon's Yat Hotel, please," said Medenham. "Keep straight on till you come to the ferry. If the boat is on this side you can pull yourself across." "But if it is not?" "You must chance it. The nearest bridge is a mile the other way." "By gad!" said Medenham under his breath. "I wouldn't care a pin if Mrs. Devar wasn't waiting for me," whispered Cynthia, whose mental attitude during this mishap on the Wye contrasted strangely with her alarm when Marigny's motor collapsed on the Mendips. "Mrs. Devar is the real problem," laughed Medenham. "We must find some means of soothing her agitation." "Why don't you like her?" "That is one of the things I wish to explain later." "She has been horrid to you, I know, but----" "I am beginning to think that I owe her a debt of gratitude I can never repay." "What will happen if that wretched ferryboat is on the wrong side of the river?" Medenham took her arm again, for the road was dark where there were trees. "You are not to think about it," he said. "I have been doing all the talking to-night. Now tell me something of your wanderings abroad." These two already understood each other without the spoken word. He respected her desire to sheer off anything that might be construed as establishing a new relationship between them, and she appreciated his restraint to the full. They discussed foreign lands and peoples until the road bent toward the river again and the ferry was reached--at a point quite half a mile below the hotel. And there was no boat! A wire rope drooped into the darkness of the opposite bank, but no voice answered Medenham's hail. Cynthia said not a syllable until her companion handed her his watch with a request that she should hold it. "You are not going into that river," she cried determinedly. "There is not the slightest risk," he said. "But there is. What if you were seized with cramp?" "I shall cling to the rope, if that will satisfy you. I have swum the Zambesi before to-day, not from choice, I admit, and it is twenty times the width of the Wye, while it holds more crocodiles than the Wye holds salmon." "Well--if you promise about the rope." Soon he was out of sight, and her heart knew its first pang of fear. Then she heard his cry of "Got the boat," followed by the clank of a sculling oar and the creak of the guiding-wheel on the hawser. At last, shortly before midnight, they neared the hotel. Lights were visible on the quay, and Medenham read their meaning.