The stream here sought passage between the inclosed mill-head, with its tumbling bay and waste weir--the sluice of which I never remember to have seen shut--on the one side, and on the other the wall of an adjoining garden. This last was not lofty, but was too high to scale without fear of noise and the risk of attracting observation. Underneath the heavy pull of the water would have spun us like straws off our feet had we dropped into it there. There was only one way, and that I had calculated upon. To the left some branches of a great sycamore tree overhung the wall, the nearest of them some five feet out of reach. Climbing the rail of the platform, I stood upon the outer edge and balanced myself for a spring. It was no difficult task to an active man, and in a moment I was bobbing and dipping above the black onrush of the water. Pointing out my feet with a vigorous oscillating action, I next swung myself to a further branch, which I clutched, letting go the other. Here I dangled above a little silt of weed and gravel that stood forth the margin of the stream, and onto it I dropped, finding firm foothold, and motioned to Jason to follow. He was like to have come to grief at the outset, for from his nerves being shaky, I suppose, he sprung short of the first branch, hitting at it frantically with his fingers only, so that he fell with a bounding splash into the water’s edge. The pull had him in an instant, and it would have been all up with him had I not foreseen the result while he was yet in midair and plunged for him. Luckily I still held on to the end of the second branch, to which I clung with one hand, while I seized his coat collar with the other. For half a minute even then it was a struggle for life or death, the stout wood I held to deciding the balance, but at last he gained his feet, and I was able to pull him, wallowing and stumbling, toward me. It was not the depth of the water that so nearly overcame us, for it ran hardly above his knees. It was the mighty strength of it rushing onward to the wheel. He would have paused to regain his breath, but I allowed him no respite. “Hurry!” I whispered. “Who knows but he may have heard the splash?” He needed no further stimulus, but pushed at me to proceed, in a flurried agony of fear. I tested the water on the further side of the little mound. It was possible to struggle up against it along its edge, and of that possibility we must make the best. Clutching at the wall with crooked fingers for any hope of support, we moved up, step by step, until gradually the wicked hold slackened and we could make our way without bitter struggle. Presently, to the right, the wall opened to a slope of desert garden ground that ran up to an empty cottage standing on the fall of the hill above. Over to this we cautiously waded, and climbed once more to dry land, drenched and exhausted.