William Gresham had redeemed his promise with his life. From a cruel wound, made by a splintered timber, he had bled so freely that his fast-failing strength was barely able to hold Sabella's head above the surface until Winn came to her rescue. He recognized the boy, and as the little girl was lifted from his arms, he closed his eyes with the peaceful expression of one who is weary and would sleep. Then his grasp of the skiff relaxed, and without a struggle he slipped across the invisible line dividing time from eternity. The hurrying waters closed about him as gently as a mother's arms, and who shall say that in his death the man had not atoned for his life, or that in the tawny flood of the great river his sin was not washed away as though it had never been?
[Illustration: The rescue of Sabella.]
As for Winn, he was overwhelmed and stunned. It was so sudden, so terrible, and so pitiful. At one moment the man was there, and in the next he was gone without a word. In vain did the boy look over both sides of the skiff and over its stern in the hope that the man might still be clinging to it. Only the swift-flowing waters met his gaze, and seemed to mock at his efforts to wrest their secret.
The man was gone; there was no doubt of that; and now came the harrowing question, who was he? Winn had not seen his face. It could not have been the owner of the Whatnot, because, with his wooden leg, he could not swim. It was not Solon, for the head had been that of a white man. Could it have been his mother's only brother, his Uncle Billy, the brave, merry young fellow who was to have been his raftmate? Winn had already learned to love as well as to admire Billy Brackett, though how much he had not known, until now that he believed him to be gone out of his life forever.
He tried to believe that it was some one else, but in vain. The girl whom he had just rescued was certainly Sabella, so of course the boat that he had seen crushed like an egg-shell must have been the Whatnot. Oh, if he had only been a little closer, or if the fog had not been so thick! The boat was almost certain to have been the Whatnot though, and in that case the brave swimmer, who had missed safety by a hair's-breadth must have been—
Here a moan diverted Winn's attention from his own unhappiness, and caused him to spring to the side of the little girl. She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Oh, Sabella!" he cried, "tell me who saved you? Was it Mr. Brackett—my Uncle Billy, you know?"
"My Uncle Billy," she murmured faintly; then she again closed her eyes wearily, and seemed to sleep.
"It was he, then; it was he!" And Winn, breaking down, sobbed aloud. "And all my fault that he came on this trip! My fault, my fault!" he repeated over and over again.