CHAPTER XI 



A BREACH IN THE BANK < 



> 



THE February freshet had come. We had been A' ; 

 expecting it, but no one along Maurice River \ 

 had ever seen so wild and warm and ominous 

 a spring storm as this. So sudden and complete a ' ' 

 break-up of winter no one could remember ; nor * 

 so high a tide, so rain-thick and driving a south ^ > 

 wind. It had begun the night before, and now, \ 

 !along near noon, the river and meadows were a < 

 tumult of white waters, with the gale so strong that \ 

 one could hardly hold his own on the drawbridge * } 

 that groaned from pier to pier in the grip of the ^& 

 Jj,, j maddened storm. ,' '> 



It was into the teeth of this gale that a small boy 

 i, dressed in large yellow "oil-skins" made his slow ' \ 

 ; way out along the narrow bank of the river toward j' 

 tthe sluices that controlled the tides of the great 

 meadows. 



The boy was in the large yellow oil-skins ; not V 

 dressed, no, for he was simply inside of them, his Jf 

 'feet and hands and the top of his head having . r 

 managed to work their way out. It seems, at least, & 

 that his head was partly out, for on the top of the J \ 

 oil-skins sat a large black sou'wester. And in the e 



