cabin was simply
Madison Wayne reading the Bible to his younger brother. McGee is said
to have stopped on one of these occasions--unaccompanied by his
wife--before their cabin, moving away afterwards with more than his
usual placid contentment.

It was about eleven o'clock one morning, and Madison Wayne was at work
alone on the Bar. Clad in a dark gray jersey and white duck trousers
rolled up over high india-rubber boots, he looked not unlike a peaceful
fisherman digging stakes for his nets, as he labored in the ooze and
gravel of the still half-reclaimed river bed. He was far out on the Bar,
within a stone's throw of the promontory. Suddenly his quick ear caught
an unfamiliar cry and splash. Looking up hastily, he saw Mrs. McGee's
red petticoat in the water under the singularly agitated boughs of an
overhanging tree. Madison Wayne ran to the bank, threw off his heavy
boots, and sprang into the stream. A few strokes brought him to Mrs.
McGee's petticoat, which, as he had wisely surmised, contained Mrs.
McGee, who was still clinging to a branch of the tree. Grasping her
waist with one hand and the branch with the other, he obtained a
foothold on the bank, and dragged her ashore. A moment later they both
stood erect and dripping at the foot of the tree.

"Well?" said the lady.

Wayne glanced around their seclusion with his habitual caution, slightly
knit his brows perplexedly, and said: "You fell in?"

"I didn't do nothin' of the sort. I JUMPED in."

Wayne again looked around him, as if expecting her companion, and
squeezed the water out of his thick hair. "Jumped in?" he repeated
slowly. "What for?"

"To make you come over here, Mad Wayne," she said, with a quick laugh,
putting her arms akimbo.

They stood looking at each other, dripping like two river gods. Like
them, also, Wayne had apparently ignored the fact that his trousers were
rolled up above his bare knees, and Mrs. McGee that her red petticoat
clung closely to her rather pretty figure. But he quickly recovered
himself. "You had better go in and change your clothes," he said, with
grave concern. "You'll take cold."

She only shook herself disdainfully. "I'm all right," she said; "but
YOU, Mad Wayne, what do you mean by not speaking to me--not knowing me?
You can't say that I've changed like that." She passed her hand down her
long dripping braids as if to press the water from them, and yet with a
half-coquettish suggestion in the act.

Something str