She went down to the creek again, but it was too late. The water running
gently and steadily had done its work, taken the canoe out from among
the rushes, and floated it down between the mosses of the swamp. Making
her feet bare, she sprang from one clump of fern root to another,
sometimes missing her footing and striking to her knees through the
green moss that let her feet easily break into the black wet earth. In a
few minutes she could see the canoe. It had drifted just beyond the
swamp, where all the ground was lying under some feet of water; but
there a tree had turned its course out of the current of the creek, so
that it was now sidling against two ash trees, steady as if at anchor.
So few feet as it was from her, Ann saw at a glance that to reach it was
quite impossible. Realising the helplessness of her position without
this canoe, she might have been ready to brave the dangers of a struggle
in deep water to obtain it, but the danger was that of sinking in
bottomless mud. The canoe was wholly beyond her reach. Retracing her
steps, she washed her feet in the running creek, and, as she put on her
shoes, sitting upon the grassy bank in the morning sunlight, she felt
drowsily as if she must rest there for a few minutes. She let her head
fall upon the arm she had outstretched on the warm sod.

When she stirred again she had that curious feeling of inexplicable
lapse of time that comes to us after unexpected and profound slumber.
The sun had already passed the zenith; the tone in the voices of the
crickets, the whole colouring of earth and sky, told her, before she had
made any exact observation of the shadows, that it was afternoon.

She prepared more food for the sick man. When she had fed him and put
him to rest again, she went out to discover what means of egress by
land was to be found from this lonely dwelling. She followed the faint