"Because we should be overtaken. The wind is falling, and the boat," our late host explained, more truly than politely, "with the women in it is heavy." "I understand," I said. "And you feel sure we shall be pursued?" For answer he pointed with a smile to his plate-chest. "Quite sure," he added. "With that before them they will think nothing of the frontier. I fancy that for you, if the English Government be in earnest, there will be no absolutely safe place short of the free city of Frankfort. Unless indeed you have interest with the Duke of Cleves." "Ah!" said the Duchess. And she looked at her husband. "Ah!" said Master Bertie, and he looked very blankly at his wife. So that I did not derive much comfort from that suggestion. "Then it is Santon, is it?" said my lady. "That first, at any rate. Then, if they follow us along the Wesel road, we shall still give them the slip." So it was settled, neither Van Tree nor the girls having taken any part in the discussion. The former and Dymphna were talking aside, and Mistress Anne was sitting low down on the bank, with her feet almost in the water, immersed to all appearance in her own thoughts. There was a little bustle as we rose to get into the boat, which we had drawn up on the landward side of the island so as to be invisible from the main channel; and in the middle of this I was standing with one foot in the boat and one on shore, taking from Anne various articles which we had landed for rearrangement, when she whispered to me that she wanted to speak to me alone. "I want to tell you something," she said, raising her eyes to my face, and then averting them. "Follow me this way." She strolled, as if accidentally, twenty or thirty paces along the bank; and in a minute I joined her. I found her gazing down the river in the direction from which we had come. "What is it?" I said anxiously. "You do not see anything, do you?" For there had been a hint of bad news in her voice. She dropped the hand with which she had been shading her eyes and turned to me. "Master Francis, you will not think me very foolish?" she said. Then I perceived that her lip was quivering and that there were tears in her eyes. They were very beautiful eyes when, as now, they grew soft, and appeal took the place of challenge. "What is it?" I replied, speaking cheerfully to reassure her. She had scarcely got over her terror of last night. She trembled as she stood. "It is about Santon," she answered with a miserable little catch in her voice. "I am so afraid of going there! Master Lindstrom says it is a rough, long road, and when we are there we are not a bit farther from those wretches than at Wesel, and--and----" "There, there!" I said. She was on the point of bursting into tears, and was clearly much overwrought. "You are making the worst of it. If it were not for Master Lindstrom I should be inclined to choose Wesel myself. But he ought to know best."