"Where's the rest?" he gasped, seeing only me in the room. "You tell 'em,
teacher, Lute Cradlebow's drownded!" and the boy disappeared, without
another word.
I was already faint from the reaction of the excitement incident to the
storm, weak with the effort I had made to "hold myself still." I heard
Grandma calling quickly, "Child! child!" I saw her coming towards me, and
then I lost consciousness.
* * * * *
At evening, while the sun went down over the hill by which the
transfigured river flowed, Captain Sartell sat in the door of the Ark,
and told the story.
The marvellous light was on his face, too. It fell, in shafts of glory,
on the bright foliage of the fallen tree.
Grandma was at Godfrey Cradlebow's, but Grandpa Keeler was within the
Ark, and Madeline caressing her children with a new fondness. There were
a few of the neighbors present; they looked neither frightened nor
curious, but ineffably exalted.
"We'd got our work about done," said Captain Sartell, speaking
mechanically and with little of his customary hesitation of manner. "As
near as I calk'late, there wa'n't a half hour's more work to do on the
old craft, and it had got to be sometime arter noon, but says the boys,
'Let's finish her off, now we've got so near through, and not have to
come back ag'in.
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