fastening. There
was neither rope nor chain for lashing the logs together; a stronger
current and a collision with some submerged stump or wreckage would
loosen them and wreck the cabin. But he said nothing. It was the girl
who broke the silence.

"What's your front name?"

"Miles."

"MILES,--that's a funny name. I reckon that's why you war so FAR OFF and
DISTANT at first."

Mr. Hemmingway thought this very witty, and said so. "But," he added,
"when I was a little nearer a moment ago, you stopped me."

"But you was moving faster than the shanty was. I reckon you don't take
that gait with your lady friends at Sacramento! However, you kin talk
now."

"But you forget I don't know 'where we are,' nor 'what's going to
happen.'"

"But I do," she said quietly. "In a couple of hours we'll be picked up,
so you'll be free again."

Something in the confidence of her manner made him go to the door again
and look out. There was scarcely any current now, and the cabin seemed
motionless. Even the wind, which might have acted upon it, was
wanting. They were apparently in the same position as before, but his
sounding-line showed that the water was slightly falling. He came back
and imparted the fact with a certain confidence born of her previous
praise of his knowledge. To his surprise she only laughed and said
lazily, "We'll be all right, and you'll be free, in about two hours."

"I see no sign of it," he said, looking through the door again.

"That's because you're looking in the water and the sky and the mud for
it," she said, with a laugh. "I reckon you've been trained to watch them
things a heap better than to study the folks about here."

"I daresay you're right," said Hemmingway cheerfully, "but I don't
clearly see what the folks about here have to do with our situation just
now."

"You'll see," she said, with a smile of mischievous mystery. "All the
same," she added, with a sudden and dangerous softness in her eyes, "I
ain't sayin' that YOU ain't kinder right neither."

An hour ago he would have laughed at the thought that a mere look and
sentence like this from the girl could have made his heart beat. "Then I
may go on and talk?"

She smiled, but her eyes said, "Yes," plainly.

He turned to take a chair near her. Suddenly the cabin trembled, there
was a sound of scraping, a bump, and then the whole structure tilted to
one side and they were both thrown violently towards the corner, with a
swift inrush of w