and they disappeared to their nostrils and the harness strips along
the centre of their backs.

[Illustration: "HASN'T THE CREEK ANY BOTTOM?" CRIED GRANDMA PADGETT.]

"Hasn't the creek any bottom?" cried Grandma Padgett, while Corinne
and Robert clung to the settling carriage. The water poured across
their feet and rose up to their knees. Hickory and Henry were urged
with whip and cry.

"Hold fast, children! Don't get swept out!" Grandma Padgett
exhorted. "There's no danger if the horses can climb the bank."

They were turned out of their course by the current, and Hickory and
Henry got their fore feet out, crumbling a steep place. Below the
bank grew steeper. If they did not get out here, all must go whirling
and sinking down stream. The landing was made, both horses leaping up
as if from an abyss. The carriage cracked, and when its wheels once
more ground the dry sand, Grandma Padgett trembled awhile, and moved
her lips before replying to the children's exclamations.

"We've been delivered from a great danger," she said. "And that
miserable man let us drive into it without warning!"

"If I's big enough," said Robert Day, "I'd go back and thrash him."

"It ill becomes us," rebuked Grandma Padgett, "to give place to
wrath after escaping from peril. But if this is the trap he sets for
his house on the hill, I hope he has been caught in it himself
sometime!"