“I'll accept this as lucky,” said Rachel to herself. “The ancients trusted more to their horses' instincts than their own perceptions in times of danger, and I'll do the same. I'll cross here.” She urged the mare into the water. The beast picked her way among the boulders on the bottom successfully for a few minutes. The water rose to Rachel's feet, but that seemed its greatest depth, and in a few more yards she would gain the opposite bank, when suddenly the mare stepped upon a slippery steep, her feet went from under her instantly, and steed and rider rolled in the sweeping flood of ice-cold water. Rachel's first thought was that she should surely drown, but hope came back as she caught a limb swinging from a tree on the bank. With this she held her head above water until she could collect herself a little, and then with great difficulty pulled herself up the muddy, slippery bank. The weight of her soaked clothes added greatly to the difficulty and the fatigue, and she lay for some little time prone upon her face across the furrows of a cotton field, before she could stand erect. At last she was able to stand up, and she relieved herself somewhat by taking off her calico riding skirt and wringing the water from it. Her mare had also gained the bank near the same point she had, and stood looking at her with a world of wonder at the whole night's experience in her great brown eyes. “Poor thing,” said Rachel sympathetically. “This is only the beginning. Heaven knows what we won't have to go through with before the sun rises.” She tried to mount, but her watery garments were too much for her agility, and with the wet skirts fettering her limbs she began toiling painfully over the spongy, plowed ground, in search of a stump or a rock. She thought she saw many around her, but on approaching one after another found they were only large cotton plants, with a boll or two of ungathered cotton on them, which aided the darkness in giving them their deceptive appearance. She prevented herself from traveling in a circle, by remembering this aptitude of benighted travelers, and keeping her eye steadily fixed on a distant camp-fire. When she at last came to the edge of the field she had to lean against the fence for some minutes before she could recover from her fatigue sufficiently to climb upon it. While she sat for a minute there she heard some cocks, at a neighboring farm-house, crow the turn of night. “It is midnight,” she said feverishly, “and I have only begun the journey. Now let every nerve and muscle do its utmost.”