When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine

by C. A. Stephens

It is needless to say that I was holding to the horse's mane for dear life. As we rolled over the "stringer" of the bridge, I was partly under the horse. We went down and I distinctly touched bottom with my left foot, but clutched the horse's mane with both hands and hugged the saddle with both legs. It seemed to me that we rolled over before we came to the surface. Then we went under again, but a moment later, the horse got foothold in shallower water, and floundered out on the further side of the brook.

If I had let go of him I would certainly have been drowned; for the skirts of the buffalo coat had been driven by the current over my head, and with all those water-soaked clothes on, not even a powerful swimmer could have got out. I felt as if I weighed a ton. My cap was gone, and with it, my comforters.

I wasn't very much frightened, I hadn't had time to be, though I remember thinking when we rolled off the end of the bridge, that no doctor would get to the Sylvesters' that night.

The horse waded off the meadow to a set of bars, and we got back into the road; and on coming to the foot of the hill I dismounted and partly wrung some of my clothes, though it still rained heavily. If I had not been on the further side of the stream, I'm sure I would have gone home, for I felt awfully cold and homesick.

The road was badly gullied, and I had still another brook to cross; but the stream there was not so rapid, and after reconnoitering the bridge as well as I could in the dark, I ventured upon it, and found that I could pass.

I do not think that I was more than an hour and a half reaching the village. It was so dark that I had difficulty in finding the doctor's house, though I knew the place. A moment later I dismounted, and knocked at his door. After a while a window was raised, and Dr. Cummings asked what was wanted. I told him, and I can safely assert that he did not seem overjoyed.

"How are the roads?" he asked, after some hesitation.

"Pretty bad."

"Hum! And the bridges?"

I replied that I thought one of them had been washed away.