e side there. I looked; and when I turned again, Mr.
Gabriel was rising up from some earnest and hurried sentence to Faith.
And Faith, too, was standing, standing and swaying with indecision, and
gazing away out before her,--so flushed and so beautiful,--so loath and
so willing. Poor thing! poor thing! as if her rising in itself were not
the whole!

Mr. Gabriel stepped across the boat, stooped a minute, and then also
took an oar. How perfect he was, as he stood there that moment!--perfect
like a statue, I mean,--so slender, so clean-limbed, his dark face pale
to transparency in the green light that filtered through the draw! and
then a ray from the sunset came creeping over the edge of the high
fields and smote his eyes sidelong so that they glowed like jewels, and
he with his oar planted firmly hung there bending far back with it,
completely full of strength and grace.

"It is not the _bateaux_ in the rapids," said he.

"What are you about?" asked Dan, with sudden hoarseness. "You are
pulling the wrong way!"

Mr. Gabriel laughed, and threw down his oar, and stepped back again;
gave his hand to Faith, and half led, half lifted her, over the side,
and into the Speed, followed, and never looked behind him. They let
go something they had held, the Speed put her nose in the water and
sprinkled us with spray, plunged, and dashed off like an arrow.

It was like him,--daring and insolent coolness! Just like him! Always
the soul of defiance! None but one so reckless and impetuous as he would
have dreamed of flying into the teeth of the tempest in that shell of a
schooner. But he was mad with love, and they--there wasn't a man among
them but was the worse for liquor.

For a moment Dan took it, as Mr. Gabriel had expected him to do, as a
joke, and went to trim the boat for racing, not meaning they should
reach town first. But I--I saw It all.

"Dan!" I sung out, "save her! She's not coming back! They'll make for
the schooner at Black Rocks! Oh, Dan, he's taken her off!"

Now one whose intelligence has never been trained, who shells his five
wits and gets rid of the pods as best he can, mayn't be so quick as
another, but, like an animal, he feels long before he sees; and a vague
sense of this had been upon Dan all day. Yet now he stood thunderstruck,
and the thing went on before his very eyes. It was more than he could
believe at once,--and perhaps his first feeling was, Why should he
hinder? And then the flood fell. No t