A BREACH IN THE BANK 113 



arms of the oil-skins lay an old army musket, so big 

 and long that it seemed to be walking away with 

 the oil-skins, as the oil-skins seemed to be walking 

 away with the boy. 



I can feel the kick of that old musket yet, and 

 the prick of the dried sand-burs among which she 

 knocked me. I can hear the rough rasping of the 

 charing legs of those oil-skins too, though I was 

 not the boy this time inside of them. But I knew 

 the boy who was, a real boy ; and I know that he 

 made his careful way along the trembling river-bank 

 out into the sunken meadows, meadows that later 

 on I saw the river burst into and claim and it 

 still claims them, as I saw only last summer, when 

 after thirty years of absence I once more stood at 

 the end of that bank looking over a watery waste 

 which was once the richest of farm lands. 



Never, it seemed, had the village known such 

 wind and rain and such a tide. It was a strange, 

 wild scene from the drawbridge wharves obliter- 

 ated, river white with flying spume and tossing ice- 

 cakes, the great bridge swaying and shrieking in 

 the wind, and over everything the blur of the 

 swirling rain. 



The little figure in yellow oil-skins was not the 

 only one that had gone along the bank since morn- 

 ing, for a party of men had carefully inspected 

 every foot of the bank to the last sluice, for fear 

 that there might be a weak spot somewhere. Let a 



