o step approached me, all was silent; it began to
impress me strangely, and I looked about me. I don't know at what moment
it was, my eye fell upon the trace of footsteps on the bank, and then on
the mark of the boat dragged along the sand; a little below the
boat-house it had been pushed off into the water.

I started to my feet, and ran down to the water's edge (at the
boat-house the trees had been in the way of my seeing the river any
distance).

I stood still, the water lapping faintly on the sand at my feet; it was
hardly a sound. I looked out on the unruffled lead-colored river: there,
about quarter of a mile from the bank, the boat was lying: empty
--motionless. The oars were floating a few rods from her, drifting
slowly, slowly, down the stream.

The sight seemed to turn my warm blood and blushes into ice: even
before I had a distinct impression of what I feared, I was benumbed. But
it did not take many moments for the truth, or a dread of it, to
reach my brain.

I covered my eyes with my hands, then sprang up the bank and called
wildly.

My voice was like a madwoman's, and it must have sounded far on that
still air. In less than a moment Richard came hurrying with great
strides down the path. I sprang to him, and caught his arm and dragged
him to the water's edge.

"Look," I whispered--pointing to the hat and book--and then out to the
boat. I read his face in terror. It grew slowly, deadly white.

"My God!" he said in a tone of awe. Then shaking me from him, sprang up
the bank, and his voice was something fearful as he shouted, as he
ran, for help.

There were men laboring, two or three fields off. I don't know how long
it took them to get to him, nor how long to get a boat out on the water,
nor what boat it was. I know they had ropes and poles, and that they
were talking in eager, hurried voices, as they passed me.

I sat on the steps that led down the bank, clinging to the low railing
with my hands: I had sunk down because my strength had given way all at
once, and I felt as if everything were rocking and surging under me.
Sometimes everything was black before me, and then again I could see
plainly the wide expanse of the river, the wide expanse of the gray sky,
and between them--the empty, motionless boat, and the floating oars
beyond upon the tide.

The voices of the men, and the splashing of the water, when at last they
were launched and pulling away from shore, made a ringing, frightful
nois