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The Bridge House
by
The hours went, and the two sat near the body, one on either side. They knew not what was going on in the world.
As they mourned, Pierre and the young doctor sat silent in that cottage on the hillside. They were roused at last. There came up to Pierre’s keen ears the sound of the river.
“Let us go out,” he said; “the river is flooding. You can hear the logs.”
They came out and watched. The river went swishing, swilling past, and the dull boom of the logs as they struck the piers of the bridge or some building on the shore came rolling to them.
“The dams and booms have burst!” Pierre said. He pointed to the camps far up the river. By the light of the camp-fires there appeared a wide weltering flood of logs and debris. Pierre’s eyes shifted to the Bridge House. In one room was a light. He stepped out and down, and the other followed. They had almost reached the shore, when Pierre cried out sharply: “What’s that?”
He pointed to an indistinct mass bearing down upon the Bridge House. It was a big shed that had been carried away, and, jammed between timbers, had not broken up. There was no time for warning. It came on swiftly, heavily. There was a strange, horrible, grinding sound, and then they saw the light of that one room move on, waving a little to and fro-on to the rapids, the cohorts of logs crowding hard after.
Where the light was two men had started to their feet when the crash came. They felt the House move. “Run-save yourself!” cried the old man quietly. “We are lost!”
The floor rocked.
“Go,” he said again. “I will stay with her.”
“She is mine,” Brydon said; and he took her in his arms. “I will not go.”
They could hear the rapids below. The old man steadied himself in the deep water on the floor, and caught out yearningly at the cold hands.
“Come close, come close,” said Brydon. “Closer; put your arms round her.”
The old man did so. They were locked in each other’s arms–dead and living.
The old man spoke, with a piteous kind of joy: “We therefore commit her body to the deep–!”
The three were never found.