emed a bridge solid enough for even her little
black feet, had one side of the stream been any surer haven than the
other; and as she sought out its bases, her eye lighted on something
curiously like a weed swaying up and down. She picked her way to it, and
found it wedged where she could loosen it,--two planks still nailed to a
stout crossbar. She floated it, and held it fast a moment. What if she
trusted to it,--with neither sail nor rudder, as before, but now with
neither oar nor pole? On shore, for her there were only ravening wolves;
waterfalls were no worse than they, and perhaps there were no more
waterfalls. She stepped gingerly upon the fragment, seated and balanced
herself, paddled with her two hands, and thought to slip away. In spite
of everything, a kind of exultation bubbled up within her,--she felt as
if she were defying Destiny itself.

When, however, Flor intrusted herself to the stream, the stream received
the trust and seemed inclined to keep it; for there she stayed: the
planks tilted up and down, the water washed over her, but there were the
falls at nearly the same distance as when she embarked, and there they
stayed as well. The water, too, was no more fresh and sweet, but had a
salt and brackish taste. The sun was nearly overhead, and she was in an
agony of apprehension before she saw the falls slide slowly back, and in
one of a fresh succession of wonders, understanding nothing of it, she
found herself, with a strange sucking heave under her, falling on the
ebb-tide as before she had fallen on the mountain-current.

Gentle undulations of friendly hills seemed now to creep by; and through
their openings she caught glimpses of cotton-fields. There was a wicked
relish in her thoughts, as she pictured the dusky laborers at work
there, and she gliding by unseen in the idle sunshine. She passed again
between high banks of red earth, scored by land-slides, with springs
oozing out half-way up, and now and then clad in a mantle of vivid
growth and color,--a thicket of blossoming pomegranate darkening on a
sunburst of creamy dogwood, or a wild fig-tree sending its roots down to
drink, with a sweet-scented and gorgeous epiphyte weaving a flowery
enchantment about-them, and making the whole atmosphere reel with
richness. But all this verdant beauty, the lush luxuriance of
grape-vines, of dark myrtle-masses, of swinging curtains of convolvuli
almost brushing her head as she floated by,--nothing of this was n