e is to keep our kine at milking time from straying
away there drinking (for in truth they are very dainty) and to fence
strange cattle, or Farmer Snowe's horses, from coming along the bed of
the brook unknown, to steal our substance. But now this hurdle, which
hung in the summer a foot above the trickle, would have been dipped more
than two feet deep but for the power against it. For the torrent came
down so vehemently that the chains at full stretch were creaking, and
the hurdle buffeted almost flat, and thatched (so to say) with the
drift-stuff, was going see-saw, with a sulky splash on the dirty red
comb of the waters. But saddest to see was between two bars, where a
fog was of rushes, and flood-wood, and wild-celery haulm, and dead
crowsfoot, who but our venerable mallard jammed in by the joint of his
shoulder, speaking aloud as he rose and fell, with his top-knot full of
water, unable to comprehend it, with his tail washed far away from him,
but often compelled to be silent, being ducked very harshly against his
will by the choking fall-to of the hurdle.

For a moment I could not help laughing, because, being borne up high and
dry by a tumult of the torrent, he gave me a look from his one little
eye (having lost one in fight with the turkey-cock), a gaze of appealing
sorrow, and then a loud quack to second it. But the quack came out of
time, I suppose, for his throat got filled with water, as the hurdle
carried him back again. And then there was scarcely the screw of his
tail to be seen until he swung up again, and left small doubt by the
way he sputtered, and failed to quack, and hung down his poor crest, but
what he must drown in another minute, and frogs triumph over his body.

Annie was crying, and wringing her hands, and I was about to rush into
the water, although I liked not the look of it, but hoped to hold on by
the hurdle, when a man on horseback came suddenly round the corner of
the great ash-hedge on the other side of the stream, and his horse's
feet were in the water.

"Ho, there," he cried; "get thee back, boy. The flood will carry thee
down like a straw. I will do it for thee, and no trouble."

[Illustration: 079.jpg A Brave Rescue]

With that he leaned forward, and spoke to his mare--she was just of the
tint of a strawberry, a young thing, very beautiful--and she arched up
her neck, as misliking the job; yet, trusting him, would attempt it. She
entered the flood, with her dainty fore-legs slope