“And then—­good-night!” answered Tom.  “I know what you mean, Ruth.”

“She will sink for the last time before the current sweeps her in near the shore again,” Ruth added.

“Oh, don’t!” groaned Helen.  “The poor girl.”

Tom had driven the automobile until it was ahead of the struggling Hazel Gray.  An eddy clutched her and drew her swiftly in toward the bank.  Immediately Tom shut off the power and he and Ruth both leaped out of the car.

A long branch from an adjacent tree had been torn off by the wind and lay beside the road.  Tom seized this and ran with Ruth to the edge of the water; but he knew the branch was a poor substitute for a rope.

“If she can cling to this, I’ll get something better in a moment, Ruth!” he exclaimed.

Swinging the small and bushy end of the branch outward, Tom dropped it into the water just ahead of the imperiled girl.  Ruth seized the butt with her strong and capable hands.

“Cut off a length of that fence wire, Tommy,” she ordered.  “You have wire-cutters in your auto kit, haven’t you?”

“Sure!” cried Tom.  “Never travel without ’em since we were at Silver Ranch, you know.  There!  She’s got it.”

Hazel Gray had seized upon the branch.  She was too exhausted to reach the bank of the river without help, and just here the eddy began to swing her around again, away from the shore.

The men of the company came running now, giving lusty shouts of encouragement, but—­that was all!  The director had allowed the girl to get into a perilous position on the leaning tree without having a boat and crew in readiness to pick her up if she fell into the river.  It was an unpardonable piece of neglect, and there might still serious consequences arise from it.

For the girl in the water was so exhausted that she could not long cling to the limb.  It was but a frail support between her and drowning.

When the men arrived Ruth feared to have them even touch the branch she held, and she motioned them back.  She knew that the girl in the stream was almost exhausted and that a very little would cause her to lose her hold upon the branch altogether.

“Don’t touch it!  I beg of you, don’t touch it!” cried Ruth, as one excited man undertook to take the butt of the branch.

“You can’t hold it, Miss! you’ll be pulled into the water.”

“Never fear for me,” the girl from the Red Mill returned.  “I know what I am about——­Oh, goody! here comes Tom!”

She depended on Tom—­she knew that he would do something if anybody could.  She gazed upon the wet, white face of the girl in the water and knew that whatever Tom did must be done at once.  Hazel Gray was loosing her hold.

“Oh! oh! oh!” screamed Helen, standing in the automobile with clasped hands.  “Don’t let her drown, Tommy!  Don’t let her go down again—­don’t!”

Tom came, with grimly set lips, dragging about twenty feet of fence wire behind him.  Luckily it was smooth wire—­not barbed.  He quickly made a loop in one end of it and wriggled the other end toward Ruth and the excited men.