CHAPTER XI 



A BREACH IN THE BANK 



THE February freshet had come. We had been 

 expecting 1 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 

 maddened storm. 



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

 dressed in large yellow "oil-skins" made his slow 

 way out along the narrow bank of the river toward 

 the sluices that controlled the tides of the great 

 meadows. 



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

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

 feet and hands and the top of his head having 

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

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

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



