That would unquestionably have been the end of Bob Yancy when he
was shot out into the muddy waters of the Elk River, had not Mr.
Richard Keppel Cavendish, variously known as Long-Legged Dick,
and Chills-and-Fever Cavendish, of Lincoln County, in the state
of Tennessee, some months previously and after unprecedented
mental effort on his part, decided that Lincoln County was no
place for him. When he had established this idea firmly in his
own mind and in the mind of Polly, his wife, he set about solving
the problem of transportation.

Mr. Cavendish's paternal grandparent had drifted down the Holston
and Tennessee; and Mr. Cavendish's father, in his son's youth,
had poled up the Elk. Mr. Cavendish now determined to float down
the Elk to its juncture with the Tennessee, down the Tennessee to
the Ohio, and if need be, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and
keep drifting until he found some spot exactly suited to his
taste. Temperamentally, he was well adapted to drifting. No
conception of vicarious activity could have been more congenial.

With this end in view he had toiled through late winter and early
spring, building himself a raft on which to transport his few
belongings and his numerous family; there were six little
Cavendishes, and they ranged in years from four to eleven; there
was in addition the baby, who was always enumerated separately.
This particular infant Mr. Cavendish said he wouldn't take a
million dollars for. He usually added feelingly that he wouldn't
give a piece of chalk for another one.

June found him aboard his raft with all his earthly possessions
bestowed about him, awaiting the rains and freshets that were to