"
She said little the rest of the journey. Her mind was busy with
the idea he had by merest accident given her. If he could have
looked in upon her thoughts, he would have been amazed and not
a little alarmed by the ferment he had set up.
Where they reached the river the bank was mud and thick willows,
the haunt of incredible armies of mosquitoes. "It's a mystery to
me," cried he, "why these fiends live in lonely places far away
from blood, when they're so mad about it." After some searching
he found a clear stretch of sandy gravel where she would be not
too uncomfortable while he was gone for a boat. He left the
horse with her and walked upstream in the direction of
Brooksburg. As he had warned her that he might be gone a long
time, he knew she would not be alarmed for him--and she had
already proved that timidity about herself was not in her nature.
But he was alarmed for her--this girl alone in that lonely
darkness--with light enough to make her visible to any prowler.
About an hour after he left her he returned in a rowboat he had
borrowed at the water mill. He hitched the horse in the deep
shadow of the break in the bank. She got into the boat, put on
the slip and the sunbonnet, put her sailor hat in the bag. They
pushed off and he began the long hard row across and upstream.
The moon was high now and was still near enough to its full
glory to pour a flood of beautiful light upon the broad
river--the lovely Ohio at its loveliest part.
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