And before anybody could say a word, in he went.
'He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men spread to one side.

But the old man got it aboard and busted in the head, and there was a baby in it! Yes, sir, a stark naked baby.

It was Dick Allbright's baby; he owned up and said so.
'"Yes," he says, a-leaning over it, "yes, it is my own lamented darling, my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased," says he,--for he could curl his tongue around the bulliest words in the language when he was a mind to, and lay them before you without a jint started, anywheres.

Yes, he said he used to live up at the head of this bend, and one night he choked his child, which was crying, not intending to kill it,--which was prob'ly a lie,--and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l, before his wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar'l had chased him.

He said the bad luck always begun light, and lasted till four men was killed, and then the bar'l didn't come any more after that.