at her, as if still unable to comprehend what she had
accomplished in crossing the flooded bottoms. Her eyes fell back to
the fire. "What a blaze!" she murmured as the driftwood snapped and
roared. "It's fine for to-night, isn't it?"

"I know you both must have been in the water," he insisted, leaning
forward in front of Dicksie to feel Marion's skirt.

"I'm not wet!" declared Marion, drawing back.

"Nonsense, you are wet as a rat! Tell me," he asked, looking at
Dicksie, "about your trouble up at the bend. I know something about
it. Are the men there to-night? Given up, have they? Too bad! Do open
your jackets and try to dry yourselves, both of you, and I'll take a
look at the river."

"Suppose--I only say suppose--you first take a look at me." The voice
came from behind the group at the fire, and the three turned
together.

"By Heaven, Gordon Smith!" exclaimed McCloud. "Where did you come
from?"

Whispering Smith stood in the gloom in patience. "Where do I look as
if I had come from? Why don't you ask me whether I'm wet? And won't
you introduce me--but this is Miss Dicksie Dunning, I am sure."

Marion with laughter hastened the introduction.

"And you are wet, of course," said McCloud, feeling Smith's shoulder.

"No, only soaked. I have fallen into the river two or three times,
and the last time a big rhinoceros of yours down the grade, a section
foreman named Klein, was obliging enough to pull me out. Oh, no! I was
not looking for you," he ran on, answering McCloud's question; "not
when he pulled me out. I was just looking for a farm or a ladder or
something. Klein, for a man named Small, is the biggest Dutchman I
ever saw. 'Tell me, Klein,' I asked, after he had quit dragging me
out--he's a Hanoverian--'where did you get your pull? And how about
your height? Did your grandfather serve as a grenadier under old
Frederick William and was he kidnapped?' Bill, don't feed my horse for
a while. And Klein tried to light a cigar I had just taken from my
pocket and given him--fancy! the Germans are a remarkable people--and
sat down to tell me his history, when some friend down the line began
bawling through a megaphone, and all that poor Klein had time to say
was that he had had no supper, nor dinner, nor yet breakfast, and
would be obliged for some by the boat he forwarded me in." And, in
closing, Whispering Smith looked cheerfully around at Marion, at
McCloud, and last and longest of all at Dicksie Dunning.

"Di