She was painfully intent upon another thing, upon the search for some indication of her cousin. The logs were moving but slowly in the current, and were heaped so irregularly that no clear survey of the whole surface could be had. There seemed an eternity of suffering in every second which she spent thus, scanning the scene. Could the crush of logs have killed him? Even if he had escaped that, would he not be drowned by this time? The grinding of the logs against each other, the swash of the water at her feet, Isabel’s faint moaning on the mound above, seemed to her dazed terror a sort of death dirge. Oh, joy! She caught sight of something in cloth between two great tree-trunks, drenched, covered with the red grime of rotten wood, motionless; but it was Seth. His face she could not see, nor whether it was under water or not. She walked boldly into the stream--kneedeep at the outset, and the slippery rocks shelving off swiftly into unknown brown-black depths--but there was no hesitation. A halfdozen steps, and she disappeared suddenly beneath the water. Isabel wrung her hands in despair, too deep now to find a voice; but Annie had only slipped on the treacherous slates, and found her footing again. The water came to her shoulders now, and was growing deeper steadily. With a strength born of desperation she clambered up on the birch, which floated nearest her, and pulled herself along its length, swaying as it rolled in the current under her weight, but managing to keep on top. It was nothing short of miraculous to Isabel’s eyes, the manner in which she balanced herself, clambered from log to log, overcame all the obstacles which lay between her and the inanimate form at the other side. The distance was not great, and a swimmer would have made nothing of the feat, but for a girl encumbered with heavy wet skirts, and in deep water for the first time, it was a real achievement. At last she reached Seth--her progress had covered three minutes, and seemed to her hours long--and, throwing herself across both logs, with a final effort lifted his head upon her shoulder. “He is alive!” she said to Isabel, feebly now, but with a great sigh of relief. The city woman ran down at this, all exultation. At Annie’s suggestion, she tied their two shawls together, fastened one end to a pole, and managed to fling the other over to the rescuer; it was easy work after that to draw the logs to the bank, and then Annie, standing knee-deep again in the water, made shift to get the heavy dead weight safe on land. The two women tugged their burden through the alders, and up to the place where the dinner dishes still lay, with scarcely a word. Then exhausted, excited, overjoyed, Isabel threw herself in Annie’s arms and they both found relief in tears. Seth had been struck on the head and stunned by the first falling log; how much he had been in the water or how near he had been to drowning could not be discovered.