"The mules are not running away with him, Mrs. Boggs," urged Helen.

"They'll kill him! He's crazy! It's his money-- the poor, poor man!"

It was evident that Aunt Alvirah read the miller's excitement aright.
Ruth remembered the cash-box and wondered if it had been left in the
mill while her uncle went to Cheslow? However that might be, her
attention-- indeed, the attention of everybody about the mill-- was
held by the reckless actions of Mr. Potter.

It was not fifteen minutes after the wave had hit the mill and torn
away a part of the outer office wall and the loading platform, or
wharf, when the racing mules came down to the turbulent stream that
lay between the Cheslow road and the Red Mill. The frightened animals
would have balked at the stream, but the miller, still standing in the
wagon, coiled the whip around his head and then lashed out with it,
laying it, like a tongue of living fire, across the mules' backs.

They were young animals and they had been unused, until this day, to
the touch of the blacksnake. They leaped forward with almost force
enough to break out of their harness, but landing in the deep water
with the wagon behind them. So far out did they leap that they went
completely under and the wagon dipped until the body was full of
water.

But there stood the miller, upright and silent, plying the whip when
they came to the surface, and urging them on. Ruth had noticed before
this that Uncle Jabez was not cruel to his team, or to his other
animals; but this was actual brutality.