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At half past, the edge of the moon's disk clove the sky-line, and the shadow of the ridge crept down among the willows and tule-beds of the bottom. At ten the shadow had shrunk; it lay black on the ditch-bank, but the whispering treetops below were turning in silver light that flickered along the cow-path and caught the still eye of a dark, shallow pool among the tules.
The firelight touched his face, and showed her Travis: haggard, hollow-eyed, soaked with ditch-water, and matted with mud, looking as if he had been dragged bodily through the ditch-bank, like thread through a piece of cloth. Nancy did not try to avoid him. "Oh, is it you?" he marveled, softly smiling up at her. "What a splendid ride you made! Did nobody thank you?
A half-choked cry followed the plunge, then ugly sounds of a scuffle under the ditch-bank men breathing hard, sighing and snorting; and somebody gasped as if he were being held down till his breath was gone. "Get in there, you old muskrat! You shall stop your own breaks if it takes your cursed carcass to do it! Now then, have you got your breath?"
"He's got more time to look after the ditch." There is no sand, now, in Travis's bread; the prettiest girl on the ditch makes it for him, and walks beside him when the lights are fair and the shadows long on the ditch-bank.
"You had better go home, Miss Nancy, and light a fire and warm a blanket for your father's bed. He'll be pretty cold before he gets through with this night's work." After this cruel speech he took no more notice of Nancy, but leaped upon the ditch-bank and began hurling earth in great shovelfuls, patting the old man on the head with his cold tool whenever he tried to clamber up after him.
He put his horse to a run, and lightened ship as he went, casting off his sack of oats, then his coat and such tools as he could spare; he might have been traced to the scene of disaster by his impedimenta strewing the ditch-bank. The water had had hours the start of him; its work was sickening to behold.
Guy was in the ditch-bank, gathering flowers but Muriel For the first time in our lives, we had forgotten Muriel. She stood in the horse's path the helpless, blind child. The next instant she was knocked down. I never heard a curse on John Halifax's lips but once that once. Lord Luxmore heard it too.
Brother Thomas caught me up, as if I had been a child, in his arms, and tossed me over the ditch-bank into the wood, where I crashed on my face through the boughs. "Only one horse would have fallen, and that had brought the others on us. The Scot is safe enough, his mouth is well shut. I will have no blood to- night; leave him to the wolves.
There was a distressful space to cross, of sand and slippery mud and drowned vegetation, including the remains of her garden; the look of everything was changed. Only the ditch-bank against the reddened sky supplied the usual landmark.
Weariness overcame him, and at the end of his beat he slept, under the lee of the ditch-bank, instead of returning to his camp. Next morning he was riding along at his usual pace when it struck him how incredibly the ditch had fallen.
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