any with a strange drowsiness, just as he felt a heavy, sickening
shock, which had the effect of making coruscations of light flash before
his eyes; then he flung out his arms wildly, roused to renewed action
for a few moments by the blow, and lastly all was blank.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

A HARD FIGHT.

Richard Frayne opened his eyes, to gaze about him dreamily for some
little time before he could grasp what had happened and where he was.
Then a throbbing in his head and a sensation of smarting assailed him,
but he did not stir, for his legs were cramped; and _wash, wash, wash_,
the waters were sweeping along nearly to his chest.

At last, with a bound, full consciousness returned, and he realised that
he was lying wedged in amongst a pile of broken woodwork, evidently a
great shed or barn which had been swept down the river till its progress
had been checked by a clump of elm-trees, and the force of the water had
rent it up and piled the broken posts and rafters, driving them, and
pressing them by its weight into a chaotic mass, over and through which
the torrent rushed.

The drowning lad had been driven heavily by the force of the stream
right upon this wreck, head and shoulders above the surface, and, though
the water had torn and dragged at him afterwards, it was only to wedge
him in more firmly, so that it was some time before he could free his
legs from where they were, fast between two beams, the heavy pressure of
the water forcing them ever down toward where it rushed furiously
through the timbers. But at last he managed to climb higher and rest,
panting, upon the sloping mass of woodwork, with the water streaming
from him and the hot sunshine beginning to send a glow into his benumbed
limbs.

He was so far down the river now that the country round beyond the
flooded meadows looked strange; but he soon grasped the fact that he was
on the far side of the river at the edge of a wood, among whose trees
the stream was hissing as it ran, and that about a hundred yards away
the land rose in a sunny coppice, edged by tall timber trees, whose
continuity was suggestive of a road.

It was pleasant and warm there, and he lay for some time without feeling
the slightest disposition to stir, till a creaking and cracking sound
startled him into action, suggestive as it was of the breaking up of the
pile of timber. And now, in an agony of fear, Richard rose to his knees
and looked wildly round for a way of escape.

On