“You can feel his heart beat, and he’s bleeding some,” said Cavendish.

“Let me see—­just barely flutters, don’t it?  Henry, go mind the sweep and see we don’t get aground!  Keppel, you start a fire and warm some water!  Connie, you tear up my other petticoat for bandagesnow, stir around, all of you!” And then began a period of breathless activity.  They first lifted Yancy into the circle of illumination cast by the fire Keppel had started on the hearth of flat stones before the shanties.  Then, with Constance to hold a pan of warm water, Mrs. Cavendish deftly bathed the gaping wound in Yancy’s shoulder where Murrell had driven his knife.  This she bandaged with strips torn from her petticoat.  Next she began on the ragged cut left by Slosson’s club.

“He’s got a right to be dead!” said Cavendish.

“Get the shears, Dick—­I must snip away some of his hair.”

All this while the four half-naked youngest Cavendishes, very still now, stood about the stone hearth in the chill dawn and watched their mother’s surgery with a breathless interest.  Only the outcast Henry at the sweep ever and anon lifted his voice between sobs of mingled rage and disappointment, and demanded what was doing.

“Think he is going to die, Polly?” whispered Cavendish at length.  Their heads, hers very black and glossy, his very blond, were close together as they bent above the injured man.

“I never say a body’s going to die until he’s dead,” said Polly.  “He’s still breathing, and a Christian has got to do what they can.  Don’t you think you ought to tie up?”

“The freshet’s leaving us.  I’ll run until we hit the big water down by Pleasantville, and then tie up,” said Cavendish.

“I reckon we’d better lift him on to one of the beds—­get his wet clothes off and wrap him up warm,” said Polly.

“Oh, put him in our bed!” cried all the little Cavendishes.

And Yancy was borne into the smaller of the two shanties, where presently his bandaged head rested on the long communal pillow.  Then his wet clothes were hung up to dry along with a portion of the family wash which fluttered on a rope stretched between the two shanties.

The raft had all the appearance of a cabin dooryard.  There was, in addition to the two shelters of bark built over a light framework of poles, a pen which housed a highly domestic family of pigs, while half a dozen chickens enjoyed a restricted liberty.  With Yancy disposed of, the regular family life was resumed.  It was sun-up now.  The little Cavendishes, reluctant but overpersuaded, had their faces washed alongside and were dressed by Connie, while Mrs. Cavendish performed the same offices for the baby.  Then there was breakfast, from which Mr. Cavendish rose yawning to go to bed, where, before dropping off to sleep, he played with the baby.  This left Mrs. Cavendish in full command of her floating dooryard.  She smoked a reflective pipe, watching the river between puffs, and occasionally lending a hand at the sweeps.  Later the family wash engaged her.  It had neither beginning nor end, but serialized itself from day to day.  Connie was already proficient at the tubs.  It was a knack she was in no danger of losing.