LITMIR.BIZ

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was a strong swimmer. Yet when he faced the running water he dared not take the risk for the sake of an animal, and said so. But a herdsman on the farm had ​also heard her calling and had noted the bleating of the lamb. Running down the bank, he had flung off his coat and leaped into the water. With a few strokes he had reached the drowning beast. To get back was not an easy matter, and twice the watchers thought the swimmer must fail, hampered as he was by the struggling beast and with the strong tide against him. But he had fought his way bravely, carrying the lamb, as a cat would her kitten, in his mouth. When he at length reached the side the watchers ran to meet him and helped him ashore. The woman said little, but thanked him with shining and excited eyes. The herd was shamed by her gratitude. He was a coward the minute he was out of danger—afraid of thanks. He shuffled off, saying something about a flood in the river if the heavy rains continued. When he had gone the woman turned to her husband: ‘Oh, if you had done that!’ ‘But dear,’ he answered, ‘is an animal worth the risk of a human life?’ ‘Oh, it was not the lamb,’ she replied, with glowing eyes—then added thoughtfully, ‘He was a man.’

      "‘I am not as fine a swimmer as he,’ the ​man retorted, angry with her and with himself. ‘Perhaps you would have been sorry if I had gone to save your lamb and had been drowned?’

      "In a moment she had turned and taken his hands in hers.

      "‘Oh, dear love, yes!’ she said. ‘I am glad you did not risk it. I did not think; but I love courage so.’

      "She took the lamb in her arms and carried it into the house. As he walked beside her, the man heard her whisper, as she kissed the wet, woolly head, ‘Yet it is but right that the strong should help the weak, even if it be only a lamb.’

      "After that it seemed as though something had come between them, something neither could define. True, she loved him even more than before, it might be, but not in the same way. Now she seemed to add pity to her love, and no pride. She did not look up to him, but down upon him. Her love was like that of a mother for a crippled child. Yet, after all, it was the greater love; for love of the weak and failing is true love, while love of the strong and successful is selfish in a degree ​when he who loves lives in the shadow of that strength.

      "One evening the man, sitting in the doorway with his beloved violin at his shoulder, beheld the woman coming towards him in great haste, her pretty curls behind her in the wind, her cloak blown back, her little feet twinkling in their speed. At first he did not hear her calling to him, for his soul was still with his music, and travelled slowly from his dreams. Soon her frightened face became more distinct, and he was conscious something disastrous had happened. He put down the violin and went to meet her, the bow still in his hand. She turned back the way she had come when she saw he was approaching her, and waved to him to hasten.

      "‘The bridge!’ she cried—‘the bridge!’

      "He hurried after her, and they reached the bridge together. What a sight there met his eyes! The river, turbulent, uncontrollable, mad, swollen to twice its size by the heavy rains, rolled by in a current too strong for waves to break upon. Heavy and dark it moved on, bearing everything before it—trees, dead sheep, a struggling ox, and once a white ​face with drowned, staring eyes—all he saw in that moment go by like chips of wood on the great river. But more than this he saw, and most terrible—the long railway bridge had given way! The central buttress had crumbled, and the iron rails trailed twisted to the water. At the middle of the great bridge nothing remained to cover a gap of over ninety feet but the handrail, which somehow had loosened from its hold on the broken bridge and swung across—no, not as a tight-rope, but more like a ladder with rungs, which the stanchions made, half a man’s height apart. The second wire, one could see, had broken on the further side, and this caused the whole fence to swing as if it might give way at any moment. In one second the man had seen all this; in the next he had remembered that the train would pass this way in an hour. An hour! What a little time when there is much to do! What an eternity when one waits!

      "‘My God, the train!’ he gasped. ‘A hundred people—a hundred——’

      "He looked into the rushing torrent, black with its force.

      "The woman grasped his hand, and her ​nails pierced his skin. She was gazing at the wire swaying across the gap.

      "‘There is only one possible way. I have thought it all out. Only one possible way.’

      "‘And that?’

      "‘To cross the wire.’

      "‘The wire? My God! You are mad! Who would cross the wire?’

      "‘You must. It is the only way to save them.’

      "‘It is impossible; it might break under one’s weight. It is probably loose or rotten with time. It would be suicide to attempt it.’

      "‘There is no other way, and it is like a ladder—firm enough to bear a man. You are so swift and strong—so strong, Alfred,’ she said slowly, turning and looking into his eyes. ‘There is only one man to whom the chance is given to save all these people—only one man—and only one way.’

      "The man looked around; nobody else, they were miles from every one, from every help—one man; and he a coward.

      "‘There is another bridge ten miles off. I could just do it on Prince,’ he whispered.

      "‘Alfred,’ she said, ‘if this bridge has gone ​beneath the flood, do you think that that other little bridge yet stands? If you find it gone, and you leave no time to return and go this way, many will die here by your door—drowned, mangled, tortured—women and little children—little children. There will be crying and screaming—and you will hear them—I shall hear them!—O God! O God!—screaming down there in the dark.’

      "The man broke from her, the agony pouring down his forehead into his eyes. He put his feet upon the lower wire, and, grasping the other in his hands, shuffled a few feet from the land into the air. The woman leaned to his sleeve and kissed it, her face white with anguish.

      "‘The risk of one dear life, for a hundred lives; in your care—O God!’

      "The man went out further; he looked down; his brain sickened. The wire swayed and creaked beneath his weight. The black, cruel water lay beneath him, and under his feet only the thin support. And all the time he was so near safety. He forgot the train and the people—only his own dark danger was living. He sprang back to the firm land again. ​

      "The woman looked into his face; her eyes were on a level with his; she was tall, but slight and weak. She looked at her own tremulous thin hands, and at the long gap between her and the other side. The man saw the glance, and it maddened him. It said: ‘If these had your strength I would not be as you. There is a weak coward in your strong body; how did it get there?’

      "‘It would be madness to attempt this,’ he cried; ‘I will go by the other bridge.’

      "‘It is too late,’ the woman said, in a dull voice; ‘even if the bridge were there you could not do it now.’

      "The gentle woman before him seemed to grow into a harsh monitress.

      "‘I believe,’ he muttered, ‘that you would rather see me dead—if a hundred were saved over my body.’

      "‘I would rather see you dead,’ she said, like one repeating him.

      "‘You would rather I were a dead hero than a live——?’

      "A word tripped on her tongue; he could see it.

      "‘Why don’t you say coward?’ he sneered. ​‘If I were dead in this cause, you would hear them call you the widow of a hero.’

      "‘And now.’ the woman flashed up, ‘they will say I am the wife of a —— They will say you were afraid.’

      "The man turned on her sadly. ‘Oh, you woman,’ he said, ‘you should have been the wife of a soldier—the mother of men-children; you would have loved them, worshipped them, and

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