Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/29

Rh "No, a house-boat," I gasped.

"Didn't see nuthin' like it," said the man, and he passed on, to his wife and home, no doubt. But me! Oh, where was my wife and my home?

I met several people, but none of them had seen a fugitive canal-boat.

How many thoughts came into my brain as I ran along that river road! If that wretched boarder had not taken the rudder for an ironing-table, he might have steered in-shore! Again and again I confounded—as far as mental ejaculations could do it—his suggestions.

I was rapidly becoming frantic when I met a person who hailed me.

"Hello!" he said, "are you after a canal-boat adrift?"

"Yes," I panted.

"I thought you was," he said. "You looked that way. Well, I can tell you where she is. She's stuck fast in the reeds at the lower end o' Peter's Pint."

"Where's that?" said I.

"Oh, it's about a mile furder up. I seed her a-drifting up with the tide—big flood tide to-day—and I thought I'd see Somebody after her afore long. Anything aboard?"

Anything!

I could not answer the man. Anything, indeed! I hurried on up the river without a word. Was the boat a wreck? I scarcely dared to think of it. I scarcely dared to think at all.

The man called after me, and I stopped. I could but stop, no matter what I might hear.

"Hello, mister!" he said; "got any tobacco?"

I walked up to him. I took hold of him by the