ome distance
down the river; but no traces of Rad were discovered.

"Maybe he has gone home by water," was Rufe's rather too playful way of
saying that the drowned body might have floated down stream.

"If he got out alive," said Jack's friend Felton, "he must have found
his way to some house near by, in quest of pantaloons." And the party
now proceeded to make inquiries at the scattered huts of the Dutch--or
rather German--settlers along the edge of the timber.

At the first two doors where they stopped they found only women and
children, who could speak no English. But at the next house they saw a
girl, who eagerly answered "Yah! yah!" to their questions, and ran and
called a man working at the back door.

He was a short, thick-set man, with a big russet beard and serious blue
eyes.

"Goot morgin," he said, coming to the road to greet the strangers. "Der
been some vind dis vay,--you see some?--vas las' ebening."

The strangers acknowledged that they had experienced some effects of the
wind the night before, and repeated their questions regarding Radcliff.

"Young man,--no priches,--yah! yah!" replied Meinheer. "He come 'long
here, vas 'pout nine hours, may pe some more."

"A little after nine o'clock last night?" suggested Jack.

"Yah, yah! I vas bed shleepin', somebody knock so loud, I git some
candle light, and make de door open, and der vas some young feller, his
face sick, his clo'es all so vet but his priches,--his priches vas not
vet, for he has no priches, only some shoes."

"Where did he come from?"

"He say he come from up stream; he pass de pridge over, and der vas no
pridge; and he dhrive 'cross de vaser, and he cannot dhrive 'cross; so
he git out, only his priches not git out, for de vaser vas vet, and his
priches keeps in de vagon, vile he keeps in de vaser; he make some lift
on some logs, and someding make de hoss fright, and de hoss jump and
jerk de vagon, and de vagon jerk someding vat jerk him; and de priches
rides off, and he shtop in de vaser, and dhink some, and git sick, and
he say de log in his shtomach and so much vaser was pad, and I mus' give
him some dhink viskey and some dry priches, and I gives 'em."

"A pair of _your_ breeches?" cried Rufe, eying the baggy proportions of
Meinheer's nether garments.

"I have no oder; I fetch 'em from faderland; and I gives him some. He
stick his legs in, and some of his legs come too much under; de priches
vas some too vide, and some not long