ainst the side of the house
until they parted company, and floated swiftly away in smaller
sections. He felt like waving a sad farewell after the strange craft
that had borne them all the way down the valley; never would he forget
how it looked, passing away in pieces, as though its mission had been
completed after allowing them to reach the farm-house.

There had been three refugees of the flood on the roof before; now
their number had increased to eight. But whether the coming of the
boys added anything to the hopefulness of the situation remained to be
proved.

At least it seemed to have cheered up both girls considerably. Mazie
welcomed the coming of Max when he climbed to a place beside her, with
a look that was intended to be sunny, but bordered on the pitiful.
Truth to tell the poor girl had just passed through the most terrible
experience of her young life, having had responsibility crowded upon
her in the absence of older heads.

"Oh! I am _so_ glad you have come to help us, Max!" she told him,
after they had shaken hands like good friends, which they always had
been.

Max tried to laugh at that; he thought there was altogether too much
gloom in the gathering, and it would be better for all hands to
discover some sort of rift in the clouds.

"A queer old way of coming to help you, I should say, Mazie," he told
her. "What you saw floating off after it carried us here was all that
is left of the Carson bridge, which was carried away by the flood an
hour or so ago."

"Oh! were there many people on it when it fell?" asked Bessie French,
her eyes filled with suspense; she had pretended not to pay any
attention to Steve, who had deliberately found a place beside her, and
was sitting there as though he had a perfect right, and that nothing
disagreeable had ever come up between them; but in spite of her seeming
indifference she was watching him out of the tail of her eye all the
same, just as a girl will.

"I'm glad to say that we were the only ones who went down with the
bridge," Max hastened to tell her, knowing that she had loved ones in
Carson, about whose safety she must naturally feel anxious.

"And all of you managed to cling to the timbers of the bridge?"
questioned Mazie, looking with open admiration, first at Max, and then
those with him, until a puzzled frown came on her pretty face, for she
had finally noticed Shack Beggs, and could not understand how a boy of
his bad reputation chanced to b