ratching his head
as if puzzled. Then he addressed himself indignantly. "Looky yer,
nigger, w'at you stan'in' yer fer? Whar yo' manners, whar yo'
perliteness?"

Thus, half--humorously, half--seriously, talking to himself, Blue Dave
went trotting along in the direction taken by George Denham. He moved
without apparent exertion, but with amazing swiftness. But the young
man in the buggy had also moved swiftly; and, go as fast as he might,
Blue Dave could not hope to overtake him before he reached the creek.

For George Denham was impatient to get home,--as impatient as his
horse, which did not need even the lightest touch of the whip to urge
it forward. He paid no attention to the familiar road. He was thinking
of pretty Kitty Kendrick, and of the day, not very far in the future,
he hoped, when, in going home, he should be driving towards her instead
of away from her. He paid no attention to the fact that, as he neared
the creek, his horse subsided from a swinging trot to a mincing gait
that betrayed indecision; nor did it strike him as anything unusual
that the horse should begin to splash water with his feet long before
he had reached the banks of the creek; no doubt it was a pool left
standing in the road after the heavy rains. But the pool steadily grew
deeper; and while George Denham was picturing Kitty Kendrick sitting on
one side of his fireplace and his old mother on the other,--his old
mother, with her proud face and her stately ways,--his horse stopped
and looked around. Young Denham slapped the animal with the reins,
without taking note of his surroundings. Thus reassured, the horse went
on; but the water grew deeper and deeper, and presently the creature
stopped again. This time it smelt of the water and emitted the low,
deeply-drawn snort by which horses betray their uneasiness; and when
George Denham would have urged it forward, it struck the water
impatiently with its forefoot. Aroused by this, the young man looked
around; but there was nothing to warn him of his danger. The fence that
would otherwise have been a landmark was gone. There was no loud and
angry roaring of the floods. Behind him the shifting clouds, the
shining stars, and the blue patches of sky mirrored themselves duskily
and vaguely in the slow creeping waters; before him the shadows of the
trees that clustered somewhere near the banks of the creek were so deep
and heavy that they seemed to merge the dark waters of the flood into
the gloom