esitate at the
impact, turn aside, and go racing by, scouring out a new channel,
leaving the old bank bereft, thrown inland, no longer the margin of the
stream.

The river was much in his mind that afternoon as he trudged along the
county road at the base of the levee, on his way, all unprescient, to
meet this signal, potential moment. Outside, he knew that the water was
standing higher than his head, rippling against the thick turf of
Bermuda grass with which the great earthwork was covered. For the river
was bank-full and still rising--indeed, it was feared that an overflow
impended. However, there was as yet no break; advices from up the river
and down the river told only of extra precautions and constant work to
keep the barriers intact against the increasing volume of the stream.
The favorable chances were reinforced by the fact of a singularly dry
winter, that had so far eliminated the danger from back-water, which, if
aggregated from rain-fall in low-lying swamps, would move up slowly to
inundate the arable lands. These were already ploughed to bed up for
cotton, and an overflow now would mean the loss of many thousands of
dollars to the submerged communities. The February rains had begun in
the upper country, with a persistency and volume that bade fair to
compensate for the long-continued drought, and thus the river was
already booming; the bayous that drew off a vast surplusage of its
waters were over-charged, and gradually would spread out in murky
shallows, heavily laden with river detritus, over the low grounds
bordering their course.

"This Jeffrey levee will hold," Hoxer said to himself, as once he
paused, his hands in his pockets, his cap on the back of his red head,
his freckled, commonplace, square face lifted into a sort of dignity by
the light of expert capacity and intelligence in his bluff blue eyes. He
had been muttering to himself the details of its construction: so many
feet across the base in proportion to its height, the width of the
summit, the angle of the incline of its interior slope--the exterior
being invisible, having the Mississippi River standing against it. "A
fairly good levee, though an old one," he muttered. "I'll bet, though,
Major Jeffrey feels mightily like Noah when he looks at all that water
out there tearing through the country."

His face clouded at the mention of the name, and as he took the short
pipe from his mouth and stuck it into the pocket of his loose sack-coat