mile of glistening yellow
water, and no way across it but the way of the bass or the way of the
heron.

The human mind has caves into which it can crawl, pits where it hides
itself when it wishes to escape; dark holes leading back under the crags
of the abyss. This explains the dazed appearance of one who is told
suddenly of a disaster. The mind has crawled up into these fastnesses.
For the time the distance is great between it and the body of the man
through which it manifests itself. An enemy has threatened, and the
master has gone to hide himself. The mind is a coward, afraid always of
the not-mind. Like the frightened child, it must be given time to creep
back to its abandoned plaything.

The full magnitude of this disaster to the ferry came slowly, as when
one smooths out a crumpled map. In the great stillness I heard a wren
twittering in the reeds along the bank, and I noted a green grasshopper,
caught in the current, swimming for his life.

Then I saw it all to the very end, and I sickened. I felt as though some
painless accident had removed all the portion of my body below the
diaphragm. It was physical sickness. I doubled over and linked my
fingers across my stomach, my head down almost to the saddle. Marks and
his crew had done the work for us. The cable had been cut, and the boat
had drifted away or been stolen. We were on the south side of the Valley
River twirling our thumbs, while they rode back to their master with the
answer, "It is done."

Then, suddenly, I recalled the singing which I had heard in the night.
It was no dream, that singing. Peppers had stolen the boat and floated
it away with the current. I could see Cynthia laughing with Hawk Rufe.
Then I saw Ward, and the sickness left me, and the tears came streaming
through my eyes. I put my arms down on the horn of the saddle and
sobbed.

Remember, I was only a boy. Men old in the business of life become
accustomed to loss; accustomed to fingers snatching away the gain which
they have almost reached up to; accustomed to the staggering blow
delivered by the Unforeseen. Like gamblers, they learn finally to look
with indifference on the mask that may disguise the angel, or the death;
on the curtain of to-morrow that may cover an Eldorado or a tomb. They
come to see that the eternal forces are unknowable, following laws
unknowable, from the seed sprouting in a handful of earth to the answer
of a woman, "I do not love you."

But the child does n