e
into the swollen river, to pass under into the thunderous darkness,
feeling as if he had suddenly been grasped by a giant who was bearing
him down.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A GOOD SERVANT AND BAD MASTER.

It was a good thirty yards from where Richard Frayne dived in, and when
a strange bewildering sense of suffocation was beginning to make itself
his master. He had tried again and again to rise, but the water pressed
him down and forced him to the bottom. At last, with one desperate
kick, he drove himself upward and saw the daylight once again as he
struck out vigorously, following the natural instinct to reach the bank.

But as the water cleared from his eyes, his mental vision cleared as
well, and, looking sharply over his shoulder, he caught sight of the
white face once more, glistening on a level with the water not five
yards away, and a hand rose above the surface and fell with a splash.

Recollecting now why he had plunged in, Richard made a quick stroke or
two, turned on his side, and swam with all his strength after the
drowning boy, about whom the water was swirling round in giddy
whirlpools, each of which seemed to be animated by the desire to drag
him beneath.

The mill was already far behind, and they were gliding rapidly downward
and round one of the curves of the winding river, the stream bearing
them so closely in towards the left that Richard had but to raise a hand
to snatch at the boughs of a submerged tree and drag himself out to
temporary safety; and as in a misty way he realised this, but made no
effort to catch the bough, he saw the sheep whirled round and then shot
off almost at right angles from the tree towards the opposite bank,
while the boy's face had disappeared.

The next moment the fierce current caused by the flood striking upon the
clump of trees firmly rooted in the bank caught Richard Frayne in turn,
and he felt himself swept right off in the same direction, and so
swiftly that it was as if in a few minutes he would be swept high and
dry up among the bushes visible on the other side.

Nerved by this, he swam on vigorously in pursuit of the carcase of the
sheep, in the faint hope that the boy might be still retaining his hold;
but though he kept himself in the right direction and was gliding
rapidly on, he did not lessen the distance between him and the patch of
wool in the slightest degree. Once he fancied that he saw the surface
stir between them, as if a struggle was goin