Addison was really unfit to go. No doubt he felt unusually irritable. "By the holy smoke!" he exclaimed. "I wish there wasn't a baby under the Canopy!"--and while I was trying to puzzle out and piece together all these darkling hints and inferences, the Old Squire came up stairs and after a word with Addison and Gram, told me that I would have to rig up, get on old Sol's back and take my first turn riding for Dr. Cummings. That settled it. Thereupon I began dressing in haste, Halstead lying at his ease and crowing over me as I did so; and I am sorry to add that I was in a mood so un-cousinly that I at length gave him a swipe with my thick jacket as I put it on to hasten down stairs. It was still raining fiercely; but they rigged me up as best they could for the trip--buttoned me into an old buffalo coat (it was a huge fit for a boy, thirteen), tied a woollen comforter around my neck, and another one over the top of my cap, to hold that on my head and keep my ears warm. Wool socks, a pair of large boots, and some heavy mittens completed my outfit. Gram herself went to the stable and looked to the saddle. I mounted; Gramp pulled the great door of the stable open, and I rode forth into the rain and darkness. After a few moments outside, I could see objects, in outline. So much rain had fallen that the road was completely saturated. I got on pretty well, however, until I came to the meadow a mile from home, where the road crossed low ground and a large brook. There was a plank-bridge here twenty feet long. The brook was now very high--a good deal higher, in fact, than any of us had anticipated. It had risen several feet since nightfall. The moment I came to the meadow I found that there was water all over it, and also in the road, extending back two hundred yards from the bridge to the foot of the hill. I could not see how it looked, and, of course, did not fully realize how high and rapid the stream had grown. Old Sol splashed through the water till we came near the bridge. There the water was up to my feet, in the road. On pulling up, I could hear it rushing and swirling along over the bridge. I supposed the bridge was undisturbed, for there were stones laid on the planks at each end, I could see nothing save a black expanse all round me. Hesitating a moment, I summoned my courage and dug my heels into old Sol's sides. He went forward till his feet touched the first planks. There he stopped and snorted. I gave him the spur. He leaped forward and seemed to strike his feet on planks. But, as was afterwards ascertained, some of them were washed out, and all of them were afloat. At his next spring his legs went down among them. Then the full force of the current struck him, he rolled over sidewise, and horse and boy went off the lower end of the bridge, in eight feet of swift water.