utter blackly. "Wisht you'd draown! Wisht you uz dead!
Wish-to-hell, you never needa been!"

The log, with its one lamed passenger was drifting slowly in toward
Singing Sand, and Piney came on, hard after it. When he reached it at
last, Steering was quite speechless, but, with the boy's help,
scrambled into the skiff, where he slipped like water to the bottom, the
fight back being altogether Piney's.

When Steering could talk at all, he gasped out how it had happened. He
had gone much farther up than Madeira Place, and had not put his boat
about until two hours before; and then only because a great many logs
were coming down, and he decided that he did not want to be caught among
them when night should drop. He had got along all right until a log
smashed into his skiff and overturned him. He thought he must have
struck his head as he went over. At any rate, things were very mixed for
a good while. He knew that he had swum for what seemed to be hours, and
that then he had realised that he was numb, and had used what little
strength he had left to climb upon another log that passed him. He had
been on it ever since, flat out, an eternity.

Piney was getting the skiff inshore fast, as Steering talked, and once
Steering stopped to admire his youthful vigour. He was a strong man
himself, and it was a new sensation to lie weakly admiring strength in
somebody else. "Do you know, Piney, I'm dead-beat," he whispered.

"You've had a good deal to stan' in more ways than one to-day," replied
Piney.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Steering.

"We're a'most in."

It was only a few minutes later that Piney effected his landing, and,
river-lashed and dripping, both scrambled out and fell on the bank by
the Redbud shack. For a little while, even Piney was past any further
exertion, but when he could use himself again, he got up agilely, hunted
up dry wood and made a roaring fire. The twilight had closed into night
now; the rain had shifted with the wind and passed by Redbud. Piney
brought a blanket from the shack and wrapped Steering in it. Before the
fire, Steering lay with his eyes shut for a time, a smile on his face.
"You are precious good to stand by me like this, Piney," he said once.
"Where have you been for so long, you stingy nigger? Why have you cut me
lately?"

"Well, I--oh, I d'n know adzackly." Piney's voice was flat, his face
tragic. He was heaping wood on the fire, and in the yellow flare he
looked pale with t