she was making it say its prayers--a born fool!--
when that thar string seemed to be pulled, inside me like, agin my
heart; and--I couldn't help it--I jumped up.

"Say, Dab," I says to myself, "don't you be a fool. You hate that lot
like pyson, you do. Don't you go and drown yerself."

I was 'bout mad, you know, and couldn't do as I liked, for, if I didn't
begin to rip off my things, wet and hanging to me. Cuss me! how they
did stick!--but I cleared half on 'em off, and then, like a mad fool, I
made a run and a jump, and was fighting hard with the water to get
across to Hez's wife and child.

It was a bit of a fight. Down I went, and up I went, and the water
twisted me like a leaf: but I got out of the roar and thunder, on to the
bit of a shelf where Jael knelt; when, if the silly thing didn't begin
to hold up to me her child; and her lips, poor darling, said dumbly,
"Save it! save it!"

In the midst of that rush and roar as I saw that poor gal, white,
horrified, and with her yaller hair clinging round her, all my old love
for her comes back, and I swore a big oath as I'd save her for myself,
or die.

I tore her dress into ribbons, for there warn't a moment to lose, and I
bound that bairn somehow on to my shoulders, she watching me the while;
and then, with my heart beating madly, I caught her in my arms, she
clinging tightly to me in her fear, and I stood up, thinking how I could
get back, and making ready to leap.

The flood didn't wait for that, though. In a moment there was a quiver
of the bank, and it went from beneath my feet, leaving me wrastling with
the waters once more.

I don't know how I did it, only that, after a fight and being half
smothered, I found myself crawling up the side of the Gulch, ever so low
down, and dragging Jael into a safe place with her bairn.

She fell down afore me, hugged my legs, and kissed my feet; and then she
started up and began staring up and down, ending by seeing, just above
us, old Hez clinging there still, with his sound arm rammed into the
bush, and his body swept out by the fierce stream.

The next moment she had seized me by the arm, and was pynting at him,
and she gave a wild kind of shriek.

"He's a gone coon, my gal," I says, though she couldn't hear me; and I
was gloating over her beautiful white face and soft, clear neck, as I
thought that now she was mine--all mine. I'd saved her out of the
flood, and there was no Hez to stand in our way.

"Save