. The horizon in the east was banded
with yellow, and overhead the sky blushed rosily. He looked about him
and tried to locate himself.

"Guess I must be just back of Denbeigh's farm. Yes, that's their
windmill. I'd better row awhile. I'm a good way from Pine Knoll yet."
Again he bailed out the boat and took up the oars. The dugout moved
ahead like a plodding farm-horse that feels the spur and responds
reluctantly.

Morning was coming as radiantly as if there were no sorrow in the world.
With dull incredulity Jerry watched the sky kindle and the earth flash
awake. It hurt him, all this glow and sparkle, this sweetness in the
air, and the sound of the birds singing. He thought how Peggy would have
loved it all and his throat ached, and he lifted his hand to his eyes to
clear his vision. Then he pulled hard on his left oar, for the current
was swinging him around toward a little island that rose suddenly out of
the mist like an apparition.

All at once a figure stood out against the tangled green, a slender
figure in white. Jerry dropped both oars, and put his hands before his
eyes. When he looked again the vision had not vanished. Its hand moved
in an appealing gesture.

Jerry found himself rowing frantically, a hope in his heart so like
madness that he dared not let himself think what it was that he hoped
for. The dugout crashed against the willow where Peggy had tied her
canoe the afternoon before. And in the unreal light of the dawn, a pale,
tremulous Peggy stretched out her arms with a cry. "Oh, it's Jerry! Oh,
Jerry, how came it to be you?" It had been a night of weeping for many,
but Peggy's tears had waited till now.

"Oh, such a time, Jerry! The canoe tipped over, and spilled Dorothy into
the river, and I don't know how I ever got her out. And then we couldn't
get away, and I screamed till I was hoarse, but nobody came. Oh, Jerry!
I'm so glad!"

Jerry's answer seemed a trifle irrelevant. But he said the things he was
certain could not be postponed another instant.

"Look here! I'm going back to school. I've been a coward, just like you
said, but now I'm going to start out same as David did, and stick to it
like that other fellow--I forget his name--and say! I'm--I'm sorry." He
was out of breath when he finished, as if he had been straining every
muscle to raise the weight, crushing, overwhelming, that had been lifted
from his heart.

They picked up Dorothy without awaking her, and Jerry pulled hard for