LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 279, 4 May 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

DRIFTING AWAY. {Concluded,') What was Itodo ? The Falls were near now; their hoarse roar was like that of a wild beast, hungry, and expectant of its prey, while low as was the water in the river, already the canoe had begun to dance and quiver on the tiny whirlpools and foamflecked eddies above the smooth, swift channel of the rapids. Once caught in these, no boat, even were it manned by strong rowers, could avoid shooting the perilous Falls. I was a good swimmer, and twice I was on ihe point of plunging into the river, but the reflection that the canoe would probably be upset, ami Lily drowned, in my vain attempt to tow it to land, restrained me. Meanwhile the canoe had reached the rapids, and was darting on, like an arrow. It was by an exertion that severely tried my strength that I was the first to gain the Falls. There, on the brink of the rush of waters, I halted, gasping, and saw the canoe come hurrying down on the way to destruction, the fairy figure that was its sole occupant still standing motionless, unheeding of my voice or of the threatening boom of the cataract. There are supreme moments in our lives when we appear to act and think simulj taneously, This was one of them; for, with a bound that afterwards astonished myself, I cleared a stretch of frothing water, sprang, or scrambled, from stone to stone, and at last reached a sandy islet, a mere mound, crumbling away under the action of the flood; but the scanty earth of which adhered to the roots of a huge old willow tree, the weeping branches of which had probably dipped their silvery leaves in the turbid water, before a white man had ever beheld the upper course of the Mississippi. I threw my arm around a mighty bough of this old tree, and, bending till 1 touched the water, awaited the oncoming of the canoe. My first grasp failed; but, by another and more desperate effort, I contrived to lay hold of the gunwale as it was washed past me. The events of the next few seconds I have never been able to recall, otherwise than as a confused recollection, like the incoherent memory of a dream. That the impetus of the drifting canoe was too much for my single strength to withstand, that I was half submerged beneath the foaming flood, and might have been torn from my saving hold, 1 know or guess. That Lily awoke, with a smothered wailing cry as the slight bark heeled over, and that we were both in the river, and in no small danger of being sucked over the Falls to certain death, I also remember, but more vaguely. My memory chronicles, more accurately, the moment when, wet and drenched with Avater, I placed the rescued girl on the mossy mound at the foot of the willow tree, with my arm encircling her slender waist, and soothed her terror as she leant, sobbing, against my shoulder. "Again! again!" she exclaimed, as if in self-reproach. " For the second time have you snatched me, cousin, from the very jaws of death —me, the ungrateful one, so cold, so proud, so hard ! Oh, Cyril, dearest, how you must have hated me, to give you such a welcome as I did ?" I thought that her mind was wandering, that she knew not what she said, and strove to calm her, but it was to no purpose. The barrier of conventional restraint, of icy decorum, was broken, and she continued to take blame to herself for what she called her heartless treatment of myself. ' Hush, hush ! dear Miss Lowe,' I said, embarrassed by her emotion; ' you think too mueh of what I did for you, and which any man in my place would have gladly done. I own I was a little disappointed when you socmed to have forgotten me, and * ' Can you not guess the reason ?' she asked, half impatiently. I could not. 'That French lady at Bordeaux—they told me, as a fact, that you were about to be married to her, and speedily, so I—l—in my foolish, wicked pride ' It was now my turn to interrupt. «Surely,' said I, my heart wildly throbbing, * surely your words would imply that you did care for me—a little, Lily?' By this time torches were to be seen and men's shouting voices heard, along the river bank. My calls had been heard, and aid was at hand, so that we need not, as I had thought probable, await morning for our deliverance from our uncomfortable perch upon the spray-washed islet. But Lily seemed to care nothing for the torches or the shouts of those who hurried up. ' Blind !' she murmured, with a sweet reproachfulness, 'not to perceive that, even as a child, I loved you; that my cold man ner, my reserve, all sprang from my deep true fondness for one who regarded me merely as a cousin, and who would have died sooner than make this confession, but that—but that I thought I saw that you loved me, Cyril' And I clasped my priceless treasure to my heart. My tale has been told. Lily has never again been guilty of sleep-walking, of which habit her family had believed her to be fully cured, as, indeed, seemed to have been the case, until my return: and the picnic awakened associations in her memory which had, for the second time, all but proved fatal in their consequences. There is no Miss Lowe now to be the belle of Wisconsim ball-rooms; but no man has a truer or more beautiful wife than has blessed the lot of Cyril Harding.