Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/393

 the river-bank. The strands of hemp rope dropped from the old Captain's fingers.

"Stand steady, child, stand steady! Be still!" screamed Miss Arabella. Her fifty years of life beside that quiet old river and its rafts had taught her a little of the darker history of its shimmering, glinting midsummer water, and of the treachery of the sullen logs that floated so lazily on its shadowy surface. "Don't move, child! Don't move till I get the boat!" she cried again. And already one or two of the closer neighbors, wondering what could be the meaning of such outcries from the quiet old orchard home, were hurrying in through the high-posted gateway.

But Pauline Augusta, herself surprised at so much noise and half-afraid to advance or retreat along the narrow boom-timber on which she stood, decided, in her moment of new-born doubt, to make for dry land. The round logs lay crowded together, providing a path between her and the grassy bank. As a new sense of terror took hold of her, she stepped recklessly from the squared and solid boom-timber to the logs that lay nearest her.

Lonely, wakened suddenly out of an uneasy