ind of a life's
THIS, I want to know?"

From the curtain depths of the depot-wagon behind him a voice answered,
a woman's voice:

"Judgin' by the amount of dampness in it I should think you might call
it a duck's life," it suggested.

Winnie S. accepted this pleasantry with a grunt. "I 'most wish I was
a duck," he declared, savagely. "Then I could set in three inches of
ice-water and like it, maybe. Now what's the matter with you?" This last
a roar to the horse, whose splashy progress along the gullied road had
suddenly ceased. "What's the matter with you now?" repeated Winnie.
"What have you done; come to anchor? Git dap!"

But General Jackson refused to "git dap." Jerks at the reins only caused
him to stamp and evince an inclination to turn around. Go ahead he would
not.

"Judas priest!" exclaimed the driver. "I do believe the critter's
drowndin'! Somethin's wrong. I've got to get out and see, I s'pose. Set
right where you be, ladies. I'll be back in a minute," adding, as he
took a lighted lantern from beneath the seat and pulled aside the heavy
boot preparatory to alighting, "unless I get in over my head, which
ain't so dummed unlikely as it sounds."

Lantern in hand he clambered clumsily from beneath the boot and
disappeared. Inside the vehicle was blackness, dense, damp and profound.

"Auntie," said a second feminine voice, "Auntie, what DO you suppose has
happened?"

"I don't know, Emily. I'm prepared for 'most anything by this time.
Maybe we've landed on Mount Ararat. I feel as if I'd been afloat for
forty days and nights. Land sakes alive!" as another gust shot and beat
its accompanying cloudburst through and between the carriage curtains;
"right in my face and eyes! I don't wonder that boy wished he was a
duck. I'd like to be a fish--or a mermaid. I couldn't be much wetter if
I was either one, and I'd have gills so I could breathe under water. I
SUPPOSE mermaids have gills, I don't know."

Emily laughed. "Aunt Thankful," she declared, "I believe you would find
something funny in a case of smallpox."

"Maybe I should; I never tried. 'Twouldn't be much harder than to be
funny with--with rain-water on the brain. I'm so disgusted with myself
I don't know what to do. The idea of me, daughter and granddaughter of
seafarin' folks that studied the weather all their lives, not knowin'
enough to stay to home when it looked as much like a storm as it did
this mornin'. And draggin' you into it, too. We could h