The fellow in the boat realized that the talk meant business, and the two started down town. At Pine Street Mr. Crouse waited for a big boat another hour, and when he finally found one he was shivering with cold. The men in the boat engaged to run him for five dollars, and they started.
It was five o’clock when they reached their destination, when they rowed to their passenger’s stable and found his horses up to their necks in the flood.
“What will you charge to take these two horses to Old Oaks Park?” he asked.
“Ten dollars apiece,” was the reply.
“I’ll pay it.”
They then rowed to the harness room, got the bridles, rowed back to the horses and bridled them. They first took out the brown horse and landed her at the park, Mr Crouse holding her behind the boat. They returned for the gray and started out with her, but had scarcely left the stable when her head fell back to one side. Fright had already exhausted her. They took her back to the house porch, when Mr. Crouse led her upstairs and put her in a bed-room, where she stayed high and dry all night. On Sunday morning the folks who were cleaning up were surprised to see a gray horse and a man backing down a plank out of the front door of a Fourth Street residence.
It was Garrett Crouse and his gray horse, and when the neighbors saw it they turned from the scene of desolation about them and warmly applauded both beast and master. This is how a Williamsport man got home during the flood and saved his horses. It took him five hours and cost him twenty-five dollars.
Mr. James R. Skinner, of Brooklyn, N. Y., arrived home after a series of remarkable adventures in the floods at Williamsport.