d aunt Madge, looking wildly at the boy's face, which
was as white as death.

"Run, tell grandpa!" cried she, and flew down the steps, and out
across the field towards the river, as if she had wings on her
slippers, though it seemed to her they were clogged with lead.

"Has she just been saved from death only to be drowned?" was one of
the quick thoughts that rushed across aunt Madge's dizzy brain. "I
shall be too late! too late! And her mother gone! God forgive me! It
is I who should have watched her!"

Poor aunt Madge! as if any one was to blame but Horace.

There was a child crying down by the river.

"Not Prudy," thought aunt Madge. "It sounds like her voice, but it
can't be. She has sunk by this time!"

"Don't be afraid, Prudy!" cried Mr. Allen, who was just behind aunt
Madge, "we are running to you."

The cry came up louder: it was Prudy's voice.

Mr. Allen leaped the fence at a bound, and ran down the bank. The
child was out of the water, struggling to climb the bank, but
slipping back at every step. She was dripping wet, and covered with
sand.

Mr. Allen lifted her in his arms, and there she lay, sobbing as if her
heart would break, but not speaking a word.

When she was lying, clean and warm, in soft blankets, and had had a
nap, she told them how she got out.

"The log kept jiggling," said she, "and I couldn't hold on, but I did.
I thought my father would say I was a nice little girl not to get
drowned, and let the fishes eat me up, and so I kept a-holdin' on."

"Only think," said grandma, shuddering, and looking at Horace, "if
Prudy hadn't held on!"

Horace seemed very sad and humble, and was still quite pale.

"It makes you feel mortified, don't it, 'Race?" said Prudy, smiling;
"don't you feel as if you could cry?"

At these first words little Prudy had spoken to him since she fell
into the water, the boy ran out of the room, and hid in the green
chamber, for he never would let any one see him cry.

"O, won't you forgive him?" said Prudy, looking up into Mrs.
Clifford's face; "won't you forgive him, aunt 'Ria? he feels so bad;
and he didn't catch a fish, and he didn't mean to,--and--'twas the log
that jiggled."

So Horace was forgiven for Prudy's sake.

CHAPTER IX

THE HATCHET STORY

One night the children clustered about their aunt Madge, begging for a
story.

"Fairy, you know," said Susy.

"A fairy story?" repeated aunt Madge. "I don't know about that. I told
a little