Mr. Hollingsworth, I think you’ll be the lucky man to-night, such luck as it is.”

We floated past the stump. Silas Foster plied his rake manfully, poking it as far as he could into the water, and immersing the whole length of his arm besides. Hollingsworth at first sat motionless, with the hooked pole elevated in the air. But, by and by, with a nervous and jerky movement, he began to plunge it into the blackness that upbore us, setting his teeth, and making precisely such thrusts, methought, as if he were stabbing at a deadly enemy. I bent over the side of the boat. So obscure, however, so awfully mysterious, was that dark stream, that — and the thought made me shiver like a leaf — I might as well have tried to look into the enigma of the eternal world, to discover what had become of Zenobia’s