"I don't remember much of the things that happened after the first few moments that I was shot. I was intent on bringing the canoe closer to land, and was just reaching out for it when I heard a shot and then felt a sting alongside of the head, and then I remember falling and hearing the waters buzzing around my ears like ten thousand bees. Then I kenned naething for, it seemed to me, quite a time. Then there was a time of dim consciousness, and I knew I was floating on at a pretty good speed, but it seemed I didn't care where I went, until at last I came to my full senses by a heavy blow that I got on the arm. I had been dashed by the flood against one of the rocks below the Still Water. Then I realised where I was, and tried to make for land, but the strength of the flood, or my own weakness, made all my efforts useless. I swept past the cabin there and soon approached the place where the Little Lycamahoning empties into the Big, and there I made a strong effort to get ashore, and did succeed in getting away from the violence of the current, but in the meantime I was swept onward past Pilot Rock and I began to hear the roar of the rapids of the Rough Water. I knew I could never get through that stretch of water alive, and had given myself up for lost, when old Pegleg with his raft hove in sight. There ne'er was a more welcome sight. I shouted to them and they heard me, and, as I swept by, they flung me a rope that I managed to grasp, and they hauled me on board. I was so done out that I couldn't speak until they put me off at the tavern, some miles down." "It was a marvellous escape, and ye ought to thank God for it," said the hunter. "Aye, I have many a time." "I'm afraid we have seen the last of Mr. Dick." "If he wasn't killed outright he must have been battered to pieces in the Rough Water, for I don't think there is a man living that could go through the Rough Water without some support. I have taken a stick of timber through, but riding a stick of timber and going through with nothing but your own arms is a different case. I have seen sticks of timber that have drifted through and been gathered in at the mouth of the creek, and the way they have been gouged and splintered in contact with the rocks was a caution. No man could be beaten around that way and live." There was a pause of some length, during which Hunter Tom forgot his cleansing of the rifle, and there was a moisture in his eye, a faint indication of the sadness that he had within him, and all the while the mellow autumnal sunshine poured down and around them through the crimson foliage o'erhead, and the birds of the neighbouring woods seemed to sing merrily as if jesting, laughing, at the solemn import of the pilot's words. It was the pilot who broke the silence. "Is Mr. Ande nigh well?" with a nod at the slumbering form on the bearskins.