t happy, careless fellow had known!

At last, with his heart beating fast, and with the rushing sound of the
river ever on the increase, he turned the curve which led to the wooden
bridge, and, with his eyes fixed upon the dusty road, increased his
pace, till he was suddenly brought up short, just as he was about to
step down into the foaming, roaring flood.

Richard Frayne stood there aghast, staring at the gulf before him, and
then at the ragged piles on the other side, from which the hard
light-coloured road ran on and on between hedges, rising higher and
higher above unflooded meadows--the road leading to safety and rest,
away from the terrible troubles which had driven him to this wildly
reckless act.

For Jerry Brigley was as wrong as he was right--right in his surmise
that Richard would seek the bridge, which crossed the river at its
deepest part, but wrong in imagining that it was for so horrible a deed.

No: it was the way to safety--to places where he was unknown. There was
an idea fixed in his mind, and it was to carry out this idea that he had
sought the bridge--to find it gone, and escape in that direction gone as
well!

Still, he could swim vigorously as a young seal; but he shrank from so
desperate a venture, for the swirling flood told him too plainly that it
would be extremely doubtful whether the strongest swimmer who ventured
there would ever reach the other side. If he did, it would be miles
below. And as he looked, it was to see the carcase of a horse, a great
willow-tree (torn out by the roots), and a broken gate float by.

What should he do?

There was a ferry two miles beyond the mill, but he felt that no boat
would take him across.

There was the old stone bridge, too, at Raynes Corner, six miles down
the road. Well, he must cross there, for it was not likely that the
sturdy piers could have suffered even from such a flood as this.

That would do. He would get over the river there; but he must avoid the
road, where he might meet the police or people going into the town, who
knew him by sight as one of Mr Draycott's pupils.

Fortunately he knew the country well, and he could go along the high
bank below the bridge as far as the mill, get into the field path at the
back, and pass through the woods, and on and on as near the river as he
could wherever the waters were not out.

Climbing over the rails by the side of the raised road, he dropped down
and hurried down to the mill, to