She heard our footsteps as we ran up, but did not turn her head. “Help, help!” she cried again. “I can’t hold on much longer, and he—oh——”
She broke off with a sob, as strong hands relieved her of the extemporized life-line, and Colonel Eyre, bending forward, peered down into the obscurity of the pool. I was one of those who had grasped the shore end of the plaid, and the strain told me that whoever was below still maintained his grasp. “Can you hold on another moment?” asked the colonel; then, without waiting for a reply, “Cling close for dear life. Now, boys, gently does it. A steady, slow pull—no jerking;” and in another moment the dripping, half-senseless form of Tom Everton was drawn out on the bank, his drowning grip of the plaid still unloosened, and laid beside the fainting form of his wife.
“It was this way,” Tom explained some hours later, when we were all assembled for our usual smoking-room symposium. “I dare say I was pretty cross all day, thinking of the sport you fellows were having, and all I was missing, and towards evening my wife suggested that we should walk out and try to meet you. We kept along the river up to the stepping-stones, but the crossing there looked so bad that my wife would not hear of my attempting it. I did not think it so very dangerous, but I dare say I’d have let her have her own way——”
“As you usually do,” interjected Jones.
“——when all of a sudden I heard a shot close by on the other side. Then I started over at once. I’ve been across the ford a dozen times, but before I had taken three steps I found the stream was too strong for me. I tried to turn back, but the current seemed to whirl me right off my feet; I went sliding over the slippery stones, and in two seconds I was soused well over my head into the pool below, and spinning round like a troll in a brook. I tried to grasp hold of something on the bank, but that was the only result”—showing his lacerated hands—“and I think I must have been very close to kingdom come, when something or another flapped in my face. I clutched it and hung on like grim death; it was Jenny’s plaid, which she had the presence of mind to fling me and the pluck and strength to hold on to till you came to help. God bless her, I say”—Tom’s voice faltered a little—“she’s a wife to be proud of; and the next time she has a dream and wants me to stay at home, she shan’t have to ask me twice.”
“Oh, by the by, the dream!” broke in Sir Alan. “Is this accident to Tom to be regarded as the fulfilment of his wife’s dream or not?”
“Mrs. Everton’s dream was a warning,” said the colonel. “I should say that, having profited by the warning——”
“But stay,” I argued, “did she profit by the warning? She persuaded her husband to stay at home. Now, if he had gone with us he would have crossed by the bridge and been as safe as any of us. The dream did not save him. On the contrary, it very nearly drowned him.”