Pat was the man who had brought out the luggage, and he was waiting to help. He was needed. It was a very full carriage when he and Jack finished their work. There was room made for the passengers by putting Mary's small trunk down in front, so that Jack's feet sprawled over it from the nook where he sat.
"I can manage the team," Jack said to himself. "They won't run away with this load."
Mary sat behind him, the other two on the back seat, and all the rest of the carriage was trunks; not to speak of what Jack called a "young house," moored behind.
It all helped Jack to recover his usual composure, nevertheless, and he drove out of Crofield, on the Mertonville road, confidently.
"We shall discern traces of the devastation occasioned by the recent inundation, as we progress," remarked Mrs. Potter.
Jack replied: "Oh, no! The creek takes a great swoop, below Crofield, and the road's a short cut. There'll be some mud, though."
He was right and wrong. There was mud that forced the heavily laden carriage to travel slowly, here and there, but there was nothing seen of the Cocahutchie for several miles.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Jack suddenly. "It looks like a kind of lake. It doesn't come up over the road, though. I wonder what dam has given out now!"
There was the road, safe enough, but all the country to the right of it seemed to have been turned into water. On rolled the carriage, the horses now and then allowing signs of fear and distrust, and the two older passengers expressing ten times as much.
"Now, Molly," said Jack, at last, "there's a bridge across the creek, a little ahead of this. I'd forgotten about that. Hope it's there yet."