“‘You had better give it up to-day, sah, and wait till mornin’,’ said the stranger, who appeared much interested in my movements. ‘The slough will run down by then, and you can get on the bridge easy. If there are no stoops in it’—I afterwards learned that stoops meant holes washed out by the water—‘you will find no trouble getting over. I’ll take keer of you, sah,’ he added, with true Southern hospitality, ‘for I want somebody to play euchre with to-night. It’s been raining for five days, and I knew old Rack would be scudding along, so I just rode down here to watch her, sah.’ “I thanked him, but told him I was going over. I was young, boys, and the picture of the old Major’s parlor with the big wood fire sending sparks up the chimney and then dying down to adjust the shadowy light necessary for the ring scene and the tableau act, was too much for my youthful head. “‘But can that horse there swim?’ said the Southerner, with a more serious expression. ‘It isn’t every horse that can, my young frien’, an’ you had better know what he can do before you go into this mud-hole, sah.’ “‘Oh, I’ll soon teach him,’ I said, with one of those laughs that a man with more brass than sense is frequently caught indulging in. ‘He’ll have to swim or drown and you know he’ll swim before he’ll do that.’ “But right there is where I failed to size up that slanting-headed descendant of old Messenger. “Well, the Southerner was very quiet and did not intrude his opinion on me further. He sized me up about right and decided to let me go it. The buggy was out of the question so I took old Crow out. Stripped him of everything but the bridle and put the lap robe on his back to help break the angularity of my seat. By the Southerner’s advice I pulled off my pants and underclothing, tying them around my shoulders, thrust my stockings in my upper coat pocket to keep them dry, tied my shoestrings together and threw my shoes over my shoulders, mounted my steed and spurred him with my trembling heels—for I was beginning to shake a little—into the slough. The stranger told me to let the horse have the bit and keep him to the right of a line of willows which he said skirted the road. By no means was I to jerk the beast, but guide him gently to right or left with the line.