at the upper end of the pasture, had floated down to the house.  Luckily its long roots dragged in the soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current, for had it struck the house in its full career, even the strong nails and bolts in the piles could not have withstood the shock.  The hound had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched near the roots shivering and whining.  A ray of hope flashed across her mind.  She drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about the babe, waded in the deepening waters to the door.  As the tree swung again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she leaped on to its trunk.  By God’s mercy she succeeded in obtaining a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its roots, she held in the other her moaning child.  Then something cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the house she had just quitted fell forward—­just as cattle fall on their knees before they lie down—­and at the same moment the great redwood tree swung round and drifted away with its living cargo into the black night.

For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her crying babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the uncertainty of her situation, she still turned to look at the deserted and water-swept cabin.  She remembered even then, and she wonders how foolish she was to think of it at that time, that she wished she had put on another dress and the baby’s best clothes; and she kept praying that the house would be spared so that he, when he returned, would have something to come to, and it wouldn’t be quite so desolate, and—­how could he ever know what had become of her and baby?  And at the thought she grew sick and faint.  But she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half a revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water.  The hound, who kept distracting her by running up and down the tree and howling, at last fell off at one of these collisions.  He swam for some time beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast up on the tree, but he “acted silly” and wild, and at last she lost sight of him forever.  Then she and her baby were left alone.  The light which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was quenched suddenly.  She could not then tell whither she was drifting.  The outline of the white dunes on the peninsula showed dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a line with the river.  It must be about slack water, and she had probably reached the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the overflowing waters of the river.  Unless the tide fell soon, there was present danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to sea or crushed in the floating drift.  That peril averted, if she were carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till daylight.  Sometimes she thought she