g. Pantingly he cried out
"Mamma!" The only response to his call was a moan and the despairing
words, "Drowned! My baby is drowned!"

"No! No! Look, mother! See there! Colonel Burr won't let Harman sink!
Look! He has him by the arm, he has pulled him into the skiff. It did
good to pray."

Burr, acting as any man would have done under the circumstances,
having rescued the child without danger to himself and with little
difficulty, was a demi-god in the estimation of the Blennerhassett
family. Little Harman's misadventure, the enforced long swimming in
rough water, the two duckings and their disagreeable effects on throat
and lungs, left him in a wretched condition, but by no means in need
of a coffin. His teeth chattered, his hands were blue, he whimpered,
but when Burr landed him high, if not dry, on a bed of gravel at the
river's margin, the drenched youngster mustered heroism enough to
comfort his mother by piping out the assurance, "I'm all right."

"Thank God you are, my sweet pet, and thank Colonel Burr for saving
you," sobbed Madam Blennerhassett, while she gathered the shivering
young one into her bosom, and almost extinguished the life that was
left in him with tears and fondlings.

Burr took off his coat, and wrapped it about the protesting infant,
and carried him home, a feat as glorious, in the mother's mind, as his
historic exploit of bearing Montgomery's body from the battlefield.
Dry clothing, doses of cordial, vigorous chafing of body and limbs, by
many loving hands, soon brought the patient "round." By the time his
father came home, soon after the rescue, the urchin declared he was
"well" and would rather upset again in the river than be rubbed and
hugged any more.

The endeavors of Blennerhassett to trace Honest Moses proved futile.
That the slave had escaped by water, the balance of testimony rendered
probable. Abe Sheldrake, in all likelihood, had coaxed the negro away.

When night came, Blennerhassett, holding curtain council, as usual,
with his wife, dutifully repeated to her what Burr had revealed of the
Wachita speculation, and asked advice. She made up his mind promptly.
"Share the enterprise, if you think he really wishes your
co-operation. Do whatever he desires. We can never cancel our debt of
obligation. We owe him everything. He saved your namesake's life."

Convinced by this womanly reasoning, Harman, senior, could scarcely
sleep nor wait till morning, so eager was he to lay his inf