we lost her.

I doubled over the pommel of my saddle and laughed until my sides ached.
Jud slapped his big hand on the leg of his breeches. "I hope I may die!"
he ejaculated. It was his mightiest idiom. But the crooked Ump was as
solemn as a lord. He sat looking down his nose.

I turned to him when I got a little breath in me. "Don't be glum," I
said. "The little spitfire is an angel. You're not hurt."

The hunchback rubbed his chin. "Quiller," he said, "don't the Bible tell
about a man that met an angel when he was a goin' somewhere?"

"Yes," I laughed.

"What was that man's name?" said he.

"Balaam," said I.

"Well," said he, "that man Balaam was the second ass that saw an angel,
an' you're the third one."

CHAPTER VII

THE MASTER BUILDERS

The road running into the south lands crosses the Valley River at two
places,--at the foot of Thornberg's Hill and twenty miles farther on at
Horton's Ferry. At the first crossing, the river bed is piled with
boulders, and the river boils through, running like a millrace, a swift,
roaring water without a ford. At Horton's Ferry the river runs smooth
and wide and deep, a shining sheet of clear water, making a mighty bend,
still ford-less, but placid enough to be crossed by a ferry, running
with a heavy current when swollen by the rains, except in the elbow of
the bend where it swings into a tremendous eddy.

Over the river, where the road meets it first, is a huge wooden bridge
with one span. It is giant work, the stone abutment built out a hundred
feet on either side into the bed of the plunging water, neither rail nor
wall flanking this stone causeway, but the bare unguarded width of the
road-bed leading up into the bridge.

On the lips of the abutment, the builders set two stone blocks, smooth
and wide, and cut places in them for the bridge timbers. It was a piece
of excellent judgment, since the great stones could not be broken from
the abutment, and they were mighty enough to bear the weight of a
mountain. The bridge rests on three sills, each a log that, unhewn, must
have taken a dozen oxen to drag it. I have often wondered at the
magnitude of this labour; how these logs were thrown across the boiling
water by any engines known to the early man. It was a work for Pharaoh.
On these three giant sleepers the big floor was laid, the walls raised,
and the whole roofed, so that it was a covered road over the Valley.

The shingle roof and the boarded sides pro