mself but of Mona
that stayed his hand.

They landed at the gate. Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure
footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot
deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door
with the butt of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its
customary assurance, answered faintly from the loft.

He shouted again, giving directions in a tone of authority which must
have sounded strange to her, but which she did not seem to resent and
obeyed without protest. She had to wade from the stairs to the door and
when Thurston stooped and lifted her up in front of him, she looked as
if she were very glad to have him there.

"You didn't 'cope with the situation,' after all," he remarked while she
was settling herself firmly in the saddle.

"I went to sleep and didn't notice the water till it was coming in at
the door," she explained. "And then--" She stopped abruptly.

"Then what?" he demanded maliciously. "Were you afraid?"

"A little," she confessed reluctantly.

Thurston gloated over it in silence--until he remembered Park. After
that he could think of little else. As before, now Sunfish battled as
seemed to him best, for Thurston, astride behind the saddle, held Mona
somewhat tighter than he need to have done, and let the horse go.

So long as Sunfish had footing he braced himself against the mad rush of
waters and forged ahead. But out where the current ran swimming deep
he floundered desperately under his double burden. While his strength
lasted he kept his head above water, struggling gamely against the flood
that lapped over his back and bubbled in his nostrils. Thurston felt his
laboring and clutched Mona still tighter. Of a sudden the horse's head
went under; the black water came up around Thurston's throat with a
hungry swish, and Sunfish went out from under him like an eel.

There was a confused roaring in his ears, a horrid sense of suffocation
for a moment. But he had learned to swim when he was a boy at school,
and he freed one hand from its grip on Mona and set to paddling with
much vigor and considerably less skill. And though the under-current
clutched him and the weight of Mona taxed his strength, he managed to
keep them both afloat and to make a little headway until the deepest
part lay behind them.

How thankful he was when his feet touched bottom, no one but himself
ever knew! His ears hummed from the water in them, and th