iver, at this point nearly half a
mile wide, daunted him now that he saw it at such close quarters, though
all summer he had been viewing it with equanimity from the shore. A few
hundred yards above the comparatively quiet course of the ferry he saw a
long line of white leaping waves, stretching from bank to bank with
menacing roar, and seeming as it were about to rush down upon the slow
ferry and overwhelm it. When he looked toward the other side of the scow
the prospect was equally threatening. The roar from below was worse than
the roar from above, and the whole river, just here so radiant with the
sunset glow, grew black with gloom and white with fury as it plunged
through a rocky chasm strewn with ledges. The only thing that comforted
him at all and kept his fears within bounds was the patient, sturdy
figure of the man, poling the scow steadily toward shore.

This nervous passenger on the primitive backwoods ferry was a colt about
eight months old, whose mother had died the previous day. His owner, a
busy lumberman, was now sending him across the river to a neighbour's
farm to be cared for, because he was of good "Morgan" strain. The
ferryman had taken the precaution to hitch the end of his halter-rope to
a thwart amidships, lest he should get wild and jump overboard; but the
colt, though his dark brown coat was still woolly with the roughness of
babyhood, had too much breadth between the eyes to be guilty of any such
foolishness. He felt frightened, and strange, and very lonely; but he
knew it was his business just to trust the man and keep still.

When the animal trusts the man he generally comes out all right; but
once in a long while Fate interferes capriciously, and the utterly
unexpected happens. Hundreds of times, and with never a mishap, the
ferryman had poled his clumsy scow across the dangerous passage between
the rapids--the only possible crossing-place for miles in either
direction. But this evening, when the scow was just about mid-channel,
for some inexplicable reason the tough and well-tried pole of white
spruce snapped. It broke short off in the middle of a mighty thrust. And
overboard, head first, went the ferryman.

As the man fell his foot caught in the hook of a heavy chain used for
securing hay-carts and such vehicles on the scow; and as the clumsy
craft swung free in the current the man was dragged beneath it. He would
have been drowned in a few seconds, in such water; but at last, in the
tw