Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/83

the wear continued; over it they saw the hopeful lights from the manor-house conservatory winking through the trees as their bare branches waved to and fro.

The floundering and splashing grew weaker, and they could hear gurgling words: “Help—I’m drownded! Rosie—Rosie !”

"We'll go—we must save him. Oh, Joshua!”

“Yes, yes, we must!”

Still they did not move, buat waited, holding each other, each thinking the same thought. Weights of lead aeemed to be affixed to their feet, which would no longer obey their wills. The mead became silent. Over it they fancied they could see figures moving in the conservatory. The air up there seemed to emit gentle kisses.

Cornelius started forward at last,and Joshua almost simultaneously. Two or three minutes brought them to the brink of the stream. At firet they could see nothing in the water, though it waa not so deep nor the night eo dark but that their father’s light kerseymere coat would have been visible if he had lain at the bottom. Joshua looked this way and that.

He has drifted into the culvert,” he said.

Below the foot-bridge of the wear the stream suddenly narrowed to half its width, to pass under a barrel arch or culvert constructed for wagons to cross into the middle of the mead in hay-making time, It being at present the season of high water the arch was full to the crown, against which the ripples clucked every now and then, At this point he had just caught sight of a pale object slipping under. In a moment it was gone,

They went to the lower end, but nothing emerged. For a long time they tried at both ends to effect some

communication with the interior, but to no purpose.