And, as he sheered inwards, from behind the last bend of that very bank there shot a boat which was inshore of him. For Quin knew the river below the City as Pete did not, and he had kept in the strongest of the stream, which sometimes cut its deepest channel close to the shore. He was but a hundred yards from Pete when the Sitcum Siwash saw him and knew it was Quin. Here the great river below the Island, where North and South Arms were one, was at its widest. And by the way his enemy came Pete knew that his hour had arrived. Though he paddled for awhile in sheer desperation he knew that his wretched heavy dug-out had no chance against a light boat, driven by the strongest arms in the City, perhaps the strongest in the whole country. And Quin was an oarsman and had loved the water always. The wretched fugitive changed his tune even as he strove in vain. "He fix me, oh, he fix me----!" Hot as he was with paddling, the cold sweat now ran down his brow and cheeks. He felt his heart fail within him: he felt his muscles fail. Yet still he strove and kept a distance between himself and Quin that only slowly lessened. For now Quin himself slackened his pace. He was sure he had the man, and yet it needed coolness to secure him. To Quin, Pete had become the very incarnation of the devil, and he was wholly unconscious now that he had ever wronged him. The fact that he had stolen Jenny from him was but an old story. And Pete had brought it upon himself. No one but Quin in the whole world could have known (as Quin did know) that any kindness, any decency of conduct, in Pete would have secured Jenny to him against the world itself. She was pure faithfulness and pure affection, and malleable as wax in any warmth of heart. But Pete had been even as his fellows. He should have wedded some creature of the dust like Annawillee, to whom brutality was but her native mud. And Jenny was a strange blossom such as rarely grows in any tribe or race of men. It was not of Jenny that Quin thought. He forgot her very danger that night and forgot his own. He even forgot his child. He remembered nothing but the burnt Mill, nothing but the spiked logs. Oh, but he "had it in" for Pete! "He's burnt my Mill," said Quin. In spite of any help the loss would be heavy, but it was not the loss that Quin thought of: it was of the Mill itself. So fine a creature it was, so live, so quick, so wonderful. Rebuilt it might be, but it would no longer be the Mill that he had made: that he had picked up a mere foundling, as a derelict of the river, and turned to something so like a living thing that he came to love it. Now it was hot ashes, burning embers: the wind played with it. It was dead!