n he rose it was only to strike against the
bottoms of three or four deals that lay clustered together.

This, though apparently fatal, was in reality the child's salvation, for
during the half or three-quarters of a minute that intervened before the
slides could be stopped, the great planks kept dropping and plunging and
crashing about him; and had it not been for those very timbers that cut
him off from the air he was choking to breathe, he would have been
crushed and battered out of all human semblance in a second. As it was,
ere he had time to suffocate, MacPherson was on the spot.

In an instant the young man's heavy boots were kicked off, and without
pausing to count the odds, which were hideously against him, he sprang
into the chaos of whirling timbers. All about him pounded the falling
deals, then ceased, just as he made a clean dive beneath that little
cluster that covered Stevie. As Vandine reached the shore, and was
casting desperate glances over the basin in search of some clue to guide
his plunge, MacPherson reappeared at the other side of the deals, and
Stevie's yellow curls were floating over his shoulder. The young man
clung rather faintly to the supporting planks, as if he had overstrained
himself; and two or three hands, who had already shoved off a "bateau,"
pushed out and picked him up with his burden.

Torn by a convulsion of fiercely antagonized passions, Vandine sat down
on the edge of the bank and waited stupidly. About the same moment Sarah
looked out of the cottage door in wonder to see why the mill had stopped
so suddenly.

In all his dreams, Vandine had never dreamed of such chance as that his
enemy should deserve his gratitude. In his nature there had grown up one
thing stronger than his thirst for vengeance, and that one thing was his
love for Stevie. In spite of himself, and indeed to his furious
self-scorn, he found his heart warming strangely to the man who, at
deadliest risk, had saved the life of his darling. At the same time he
was conscious of a fresh sense of injury. A bitter resentment throbbed
up in his bewildered bosom, to think that MacPherson should thus have
robbed him of the sweets of that revenge he had so long anticipated. The
first clear realization that came to him was that, though he must kill
the man who had wronged his girl, he would nevertheless be tortured with
remorse for ever after. A moment more, and--as he saw Sandy step out of
the "bateau" with the boy, now