uttered a wild cry. "There he comes now!"

"There he comes!" But where she could not at first make out. Dominick
pointed to an object like a drifting log in the middle of the
swift-flowing stream. The object--a wooden trough, not three yards
long--carried one mariner, the venturesome baby, Harman. The tiny
craft and its helpless passenger came into plain view nearly opposite
the landing. Burr's boat was rapidly nearing the crazy dugout when the
terror-stricken castaway, catching a glimpse of his mother, rashly
stood up and called "Mamma! Mamma!"

"Sit down! Sit down!" shouted Burr.

"Keep still! Sit down!" screamed Dominick.

The distracted mother, to enforce obedience, added gestures to cries.
The scared child, further agitated by these demonstrations, entirely
lost self-control. His posture caused the unstable trough to topple
over and the lad was plunged into the flood. The frothing mouth of a
wave swallowed him. No; his doom was not sealed; taught by instinct or
by pluck, the little fellow had the presence of mind to save himself
by clinging to the capsized canoe. He held on tenaciously, drifting
like a part of the treacherous log. Burr's skiff was in full chase a
few rods in the wake. The mother watched the race, breathless, numb,
with all-seeing eye. Her hands gripped the oaken bar fastened across
that end of the ferryboat which was farthest out in the river and she
stretched forward head and body, heedless of the down-tumbling mass of
her loosened hair, reckless of everything but the fate of her boy. Her
strained gaze kept focussed on the precious drift. Dominick wept
aloud.

"What shall we do? What shall we do? Oh, if papa were only here!"

"Hush! Don't cry. Don't speak. What could your father do? Pray with
all your soul; pray to Heaven that Colonel Burr may save your
brother."

The aching eyes measured the diminishing distance between the two
boats. It seemed to the mother possible, for nothing is impossible to
faith, that by the sheer force of her projected will she might hold
the child back from death. Even while she solaced her dread with this
fancy the gliding log slipped free from the lad's tired fingers, and
again the woman watching from the ferry gave up hope. She shuddered,
closed her eyes, and pressed her forehead hard against the oak
railing.

"O my God, my God! our darling is gone!"

At this crisis Dominick believed he saw what his mother, bowed and
blinded, did not see--a miracle workin