"Too bad she got hurt," Rod mused, as he walked home, for it was getting late. "I wonder what happened to her."
That evening he told Parson Dan and Mrs. Royal all about his experience that afternoon, the wreck, and the girl who had been carried into the house.
"I must go over in the morning and learn all about it," the clergyman remarked when he had heard the story. "There may be something that I can do to help."
Rod lay awake for a long time that night. He could not get the girl with the golden hair and wonderful eyes out of his mind. When at last he did go to sleep, he dreamed that she was struggling in the water, and that he had jumped off the Roaring Bess to save her.
CHAPTER IX
WHYN
Next morning Parson Dan and Rod started for the Anchorage. Rod was more quiet than usual, and walked along the road without any of his ordinary capers. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes shone with excitement. His steps, too, were quick, and his companion found it difficult to keep pace with him. It was quite evident that he was in a hurry to see the girl who had been rescued from the river the previous day.
Nearing the house, they heard some one hammering in the workshop. There they found the captain busily engaged upon something which looked like a chair.
"Good morning, captain," was the parson's cheery greeting. "You've turned carpenter, so I see."
"Poof!" and the captain, gave a vigorous rap upon a nail he was driving into place, "it's necessary to be every dang thing these days, with the world so full of idiots. It's good there's somebody who kin turn his hand to anything. It's the fools who make so much work fer honest folks."