She stood on the veranda irresolutely, a couple of grain sacks thrown over her shoulder, and suddenly the sparkle of the river through the trees in the distance caught her eye.  Certainly, that was the answer.  She had not had a chance the whole summer to go out in the boat and bask in idleness.  Always before this, Billie and she had chummed together through the summer months, and she knew Little River all the way from the Fort Ned Falls at the crossroads to where it slipped away in a shallow stream to the upper hills.

There were several old rowboats lying bottom side up on the shore above the falls.  Kit selected the newest of the lot, a slender green boat that Billie had lately acquired, although she had never tried rowing anything but a flat-bottomed boat.  It was the very first time also that she had been out in a boat alone, but this fact never daunted Kit.  She rowed up the river with a firm level stroke, thoroughly enjoying herself and the novelty of solitude.  When she passed the island, Stanley was down on the little stretch of beach cleaning a mess of fish for supper.  She sent him a hail across the water, and he held up a string of pickerel invitingly.  There had been a thunder-storm and a quick midsummer rain the early part of the afternoon, and the campers had been quick to take advantage of the fishing.

“I’ll stop for them on my way back,” Kit called.  “Just going up after crabapples at the Allen place.”  She had swerved the boat towards the bank on the opposite side of the island, without looking behind her, when suddenly Stanley sprang to his feet, and shouted across the water: 

“To the left, Kit—­hard to the left, do you hear!”

Instead of obeying without question, Kit turned her head to see what on earth he was warning her against, and before she could stop herself the rowboat was caught in an eddy that formed a miniature maelstrom at this point, from a large sunken tree that fell nearly to midstream from the shore.  The frail rowboat overturned like a crumpled leaf.  Kit was bareheaded and it seemed to Stanley as long as he lived he would never forget the sight of her upturned face, as it slipped down into the dark, swirling water.  She did not cry out, or even seem to make an attempt to swim, it all happened so suddenly.  There was only the horrible, warm silence of the drowsy, midsummer landscape, and the dancing, pitching rowboat, twirling around and around in circles.

It seemed an hour to him before he had plunged into the river, and swam across to the spot where she had disappeared.  The gripping horror was that she hadn’t come up at all.  Even before he reached the spot where he had seen her go under, Stanley dove and swam under water with his eyes open.  The river bottom was a mass of swaying vegetation and gnarled, sunken roots of old trees.  It seemed for the moment like outreaching fingers clutching upward.  He could see the black trunk of the tree, but there was no sign of Kit until he was fairly upon her, and then he found her, her dress and hair held fast on the bare branches.