There was Hero plainly enough, a big black-and-white dog, which, while looking like a Newfoundland, had such a marked aversion to water that it would never swim if it could avoid doing so. Katherine would have turned back to her work, and left the dog to remain where it was until someone came along with a boat, but she remembered that Mary had wanted the dog to accompany her in a ramble, and so it was rather disquieting to find the creature had wandered home again.
Sitting on its haunches, the dog was flinging up its head for another howl, but, chancing to catch sight of Katherine, it broke into eager barking instead, pleading so plainly for a dry journey across the river that, with a laugh at her own weak yielding, she ran down to the bank, and, getting into the boat which was moored there ready for anyone who might want it, rowed across to the other side, where the dog awaited her in a perfect ecstasy of welcome.
She had no hat on, the sleeves of her cotton blouse were rolled up over her elbow, and she wore still the big rough apron she had donned for scrubbing. It struck her, as she crossed the river, that the wind was very cold, and that the day was grey and cheerless, now the clouds had hidden the sun.
Hero jumped into the boat, and, crouching at Katherine's feet, fawned upon her with great affection and delight.
"Oh, yes, you are very glad to see me, I have no doubt, but really you are a fearful fraud to bring me away from my work on a busy day like this, by pretending you cannot swim, when it is plain you have been in the water, for you are dripping with wet!" Katherine said, seeing the water which ran from the dog's thick coat as it sat in the boat thumping a grateful tail in thanksgiving. Then she noticed that the dog had something tied round its neck which looked like a silk waist-belt, and that a handkerchief was knotted to the belt.
"Something is wrong!" she muttered to herself; then, reaching the other side, she moored her boat and proceeded to investigate the message wrapped About the dog's neck.
A scrap of paper with writing upon it was crumpled up in the handkerchief, and spreading this out she read:
"Please come and help me, for I have had a tumble
down a steep rock and twisted my foot. I can't walk,
and I am on a ledge deep down a gulch near the sea,
on the rocks beyond the fish-flakes.
MARY SELINCOURT."
"Deep down in a gulch near the sea," quoth Katherine to herself with a puzzled frown; then she jumped up with a cry. "I know where it is; that gulch is one of the tideholes, and she will be drowned if I don't make haste!"
Out of the boat she bounded, and rushed up the slope to the store. Springing over the confusion of canisters and boxes, she hurried into the house, where Mrs. Burton was sitting at work making new frocks for the twins.