For a moment I could not help laughing, because, being borne up high and
dry by a tumult of the torrent, he gave me a look from his one little
eye (having lost one in fight with the turkey-cock), a gaze of appealing
sorrow, and then a loud quack to second it. But the quack came out of
time, I suppose, for his throat got filled with water, as the hurdle
carried him back again. And then there was scarcely the screw of his
tail to be seen until he swung up again, and left small doubt by the
way he sputtered, and failed to quack, and hung down his poor crest, but
what he must drown in another minute, and frogs triumph over his body.

Annie was crying, and wringing her hands, and I was about to rush into
the water, although I liked not the look of it, but hoped to hold on by
the hurdle, when a man on horseback came suddenly round the corner of
the great ash-hedge on the other side of the stream, and his horse's
feet were in the water.

"Ho, there," he cried; "get thee back, boy. The flood will carry thee
down like a straw. I will do it for thee, and no trouble."

[Illustration: 079.jpg A Brave Rescue]

With that he leaned forward, and spoke to his mare--she was just of the
tint of a strawberry, a young thing, very beautiful--and she arched up
her neck, as misliking the job; yet, trusting him, would attempt it. She
entered the flood, with her dainty fore-legs sloped further and further
in front of her, and her delicate ears pricked forward, and the size of
her great eyes increasing, but he kept her straight in the turbid rush,
by the pressure of his knee on her. Then she looked back, and wondered
at him, as the force of the torrent grew stronger, but he bade her go
on; and on she went, and it foamed up over her shoulders; and she tossed