Ryder's man swerved his heavy boat around suddenly. It was aimed directly for the leaky punt. Crash! The collision half drove the officer's craft under water and she began to settle at once. "Hi! You'll drown us!" yelled one of the other boatmen. "Sho, you ain't nowheres near to the channel," said Ryder's man. "It ain't neck deep to shore--from where you came. You fellers kin both swim, and if the sheriff can't, let him sink. I ain't got no use for him, anyway." Later he explained that this officer had come the week before and searched his house for liquor. "Thought I kept a blind pig, he said," chuckled the boatman. "But I don't. Jest the same, if he'd looked down our well---- Well! if you ever come back here and want a good drink of licker, look me up. I always have enough for my friends." Ryder took the extra pair of oars at this point and aided in rowing the boat to the other side of the inlet. He paid his helper and started for the station in a rattling old car. There was no other vehicle to be obtained. Just before they sighted the railroad he heard the train whistle. Although he knew he could not make the train, he went on down into the town and to the station. The two-thirteen had pulled out some time before he stepped upon the platform. John Ryder went directly to the ticket window and asked the clerk: "You sold tickets for this last train to New York?" "Yes, sir." Coolly and carefully Ryder described White's appearance and that of his own wife. "I want to catch up with these people," he explained, "and I do not know whether they went on this train, or on one in the other direction." In secret his heart was lacerated by the very words he used in describing Ruth. Yet he must learn if she had actually gone with White. The clerk seemed to remember White clearly. The man had paced the platform constantly until the train arrived. "Watching to see if I was following them," thought Ryder. Then aloud: "And the woman?" "She wore a veil--one o' those auto veils. I didn't see her face. But she was the only woman who left by that train." "Not with the man?" "They did not appear to be together." Ryder nodded. He had gained complete control of himself now. He wrote a long telegram to the supervisor of this division of the railroad, and the answer came so quickly that those about the railroad office were startled. A special train was ordered started from the Junction for Mr. John Ryder and would arrive about three o'clock. It would have right of way going north. Ryder paced the platform and chewed his cigar. John B. White had paced this platform, too. Whatever White's thoughts had been, John Ryder's were as black and as terrible as ever man had meditated upon.