The Claim Jumpers

, and almost before his eyes were opened he had raised himself to leap out of the bunk. T

with pine needles. Now everything bore a drooping, sodden aspect which spoke rather of decay than of the life of spring. Even the chickens had wisely remained indoors, with the exception of a single bedraggled old rooster, whose melancholy appearance added another shade of gloom to the dismal outlook. The wind twisted his long tail feathers from side to side

arer against the turmoil outside. And then Bennington became conscious that for some time he had felt another sound underneath all the rest. It was grand and organlike in tone, resembling the roar of surf on a sand beach as much as anything else. He looked

at once. As a consequence, the stir of air that in a level woodland would arouse but a faint whisper, here would pass with a rustling murmur; a murmur would be magnified into a noise as of the mellow falling of waters; and now

giving of a whole day to the picnic was not quite the thing. His Puritan conscience impressed him with the sacredness of work.

in swiftness, can transport a mass sixty-four times as heavy as when it ran half as fast. This astounding proposition is abstrusely proved. As Bennington had resolved not to make his reading mere recreation, he drew diagrams conscientiously until he understood it. Then he passed on to an earnest consideration of why the revolution of the globe and the resistance of

d the limit of spontaneous mental effort. He looked for Old Mizzou and the cribbage ga

he room in a most disagreeable fashion. Bennington's trips to see the effect of his shots proved to him the fiendish propensity of everything he touched, were it never so lightly, to sprinkle

" the man speaking but little, the woman not at all. Old Mizzou smoked incessantly on a corncob pipe charged with a peculiarly pu

ning it was

it into his head why various things happen to glaciers. Then viscosity, the lines of swiftest motion, relegation, and dire

stantly accruing masses of sticky earth at his feet, to the chicken coop, into which he cast an eye; he even took the kitchen pails and tramped down to the spring and back. In the gulch he did not see or hear a living thing. A newly-born and dirty little

was in reality different; and that the whole episode of the girl and the rock was as a vision which had passed. It grew indistinct in the presence of this iron reality of cold and wet. He could not assure himself he had not imagined it all. Thus, belated, he came to thinking of her again, and having now nothing else to do, he fell into daydr

feed the horses, and Bennington, through sheer idleness, accompanied him. They distrib

ulphur-yellow glare which lay on the spirit with almost physical oppression. Old Mizzou sho

filled all the sky. The horses, frightened, crowded up close to Bennington, trying to push their noses over his shoulder. A number of jays and finches r

ething vast and awful roared out, and then all at once he felt himself struggling with a rush o

though a lake had been let fall on the summit of the ridge. The smaller bush

elets began to show. It was ove

itchen. The floor there was some two inches submerged, but the water was slowly escaping through the down-hill door by which Bennington had come in. Across the dining-roo

d made it no longer necessary. Mrs. Arthur commenced to mop the floor. The y

uts during the trouble, but Bennington surmis

ld Mizzou. "Luck

ired Bennington, shaking the surface drop

ridge a ways. If she'd ever burst yere, sonny, ye'

al with birds, had disappeared. In their stead rolled an angry brown flood whirling in almost unbroken surface from bank to bank. Several oaks, submerged to their branches, raised their arms helplessly. As Bennington looked, one of these bent slowly and sank from sight. A moment later it shot with great suddenness half its length into the air, was seized by the eager waters, and whisked away as lightly as though it had been a tree of straw. Dark objects b

first time realized he was wet and shivering,

arked Arthur. "I reckon them Spanish Gu

paused at t

"How about Spanish Gulch? W

to-night, that's all. You see the gulch spraddles out down there, an' then too all this timber'll

said Be

mbed to the flood, many valuable tools in the blacksmith shop were in danger of rust from the dampness, and Arthur and his wife had

pt an unknown, débris-covered road by dark.

was chirping in the middle distance. With a sudden uplift of the heart he realized that he would see "her" on the morrow. He learned that no matter how philosophically