die than get a bad name. It's all right, I suppose; but it seems
stoopid to me, when you know you ain't done nothing wrong."

"Now, let me see," thought Jerry. "I say he's come this road, because
he wouldn't go and chuck hisself in the river up by the ruins, because
he'd have had enough o' them; so he's come down here this way, and he's
found it ain't so easy as he thought; for you can't get to the water for
far enough, if you want a good deep place. Chap can't go and drown
hisself in fields where it's only six inches deep, without he goes and
lies down in a ditch. Gent couldn't do that. Be like dying
dog-fashion! I know what he's gone to do: he's made for Brailey Bridge,
where he could go over into a deep hole at once. Only wish I was
alongside of him; I'd say something as would bring him to his senses."

And as Jerry trotted on, he passed turning after turning leading to
fords or down by the river, for the simple reason that, during the
night, the waters had come swirling down at such a rate that the whole
of the river meadows were widely flooded; but it meant his getting more
rapidly to Brailey Bridge, a couple of miles from the town, for he was
forced into avoiding the winding low road, which followed the curves and
doublings back of the river, and making short cuts, which brought him at
last, breathless and panting, in sight of something which made him stare
and, for the moment, forget his mission.

For, as he trotted on, he obtained a glimpse of the rushing, foaming
river tearing away, pretty well now beneath its banks, which were high
at the spot where the bridge, an antique wooden structure, had spanned
it with its clumsy piles. The great double wedge-shaped pier of oak
timbers, rotten and blackened with age, and which had supported the
roadway as it divided the river in two, was gone, and the remains of the
bridge were gradually being torn away.

Jerry drew his breath hard, and his throat felt dry, as he ran nearer,
descending the slope towards where the road ended suddenly, and thinking
of how the spot he approached was exactly such an one as would tempt a
half-maddened person to run right on, make one desperate plunge into the
muddy flood, and then and there be swept away.

He paused at last, standing in a dangerous place, at the very edge of
the broken bridge, gazing down into the hurrying waters, which hissed
and gurgled beneath him, lapping at the slimy piles which remained; and,
hot and dripp