But Mac, it seemed, could not pull up, though he tried desperately. His feet went out from under him, and he lay on his side, with the waters raging about him and bearing him toward that desperate edge. Once over that, they would drop sheer one hundred and fifty feet upon jagged rocks where the waters twisted and hissed like angry serpents. Fortunately, Mac had not gone down quickly, but after a struggle, and Jim had had time to free himself from the stirrups. He stood there in the flood now, with the frantic horse between him and that deadly fall. The bridle reins were still in his hands, and he held to them with the instinct of the born horseman, though what a slender boy could do with a frightened horse in a raging torrent, it is not easy to imagine. Jim felt both of them going, and said to himself: “One second more and I’ll let old Mac go and get out of this—if I can!” when suddenly the great body of the horse caught and held. Jim felt that the animal was bracing himself against something strong and firm, and he let go the reins to escape the plunging hoofs. But the next moment, freed from the horse’s sustaining back, he found himself swept from his feet and caught in the terrible swirl of the waters. Then, for the first time, he screamed “Hi! Hi!” though he knew there was small chance that Hi could hear him. And at that instant, a terrible thought flashed over his mind. What if Hi had not been able to cross the ford! What if he, too, had gone down! “Hi! Hi!” shouted Jim in his throat. A thousand wicked voices of the storm answered him; the cruel hands of the flood clutched him. He swept on, closed his eyes, and in his terrified, dry little mind thought: “I reckon that’s about all of me!” And then, somehow, miraculously, he too was caught and held. True, the waters were pounding him, he was smothering with the spray, but at least he was not being tossed over the brink. He thrust out desperate hands and clutched the obstruction. It was a tree in full leaf, which had been swept from the upper fall and had somehow snarled there on the rocks. It was what had saved Mac, and at the end of a frightened, determined struggle, Jim, standing ankle deep, in the red mud of the road, knew that it had saved him too. And there, at his hand, trembling, but safe, was good old Mac. It seemed strange to Jim that his throat could be so dry when his very skin was soaking and the heavens were emptying torrents all about him, but it was all he could do to shriek out: “Hi! Oh, Hi!” No voice answered. “He’s gone,” sobbed Jim. “He’s gone over the fall! Oh, what shall I do?” But just then above the road came a sharp voice in his ears. “Shut up there, ninny! I’m here all right.” “Where? Where?”