And the baby, filled with delight over such a novel and interesting plaything, shook her yellow hair down over his black fur and crooned to him a soft, half-articulate babble of endearment.
"The swollen flood was comparatively quiet now, rolling full and turbid over the drowned lands, and gleaming sullenly under a blaze of sun.
The bear having gone to sleep, the baby presently followed his example, her rosy face falling forward into his woodsy-smelling black fur.

At last the raft, catching in the trees of a submerged islet, came softly to a stop, so softly as not to awaken the little pair of sleepers.
"In the meantime two distraught mothers, quite beside themselves with fear and grief, were hurrying downstream in search of the runaway raft and its burden.
"The mother of the baby, when she saw the flood sweeping the raft away, was for some moments perilously near to flinging herself in after it.
Then her backwoods common sense came to the rescue.

She reflected, in time, that she could not swim--while the raft, on the other hand, could and did, and would carry her treasure safely enough for a while.
Wading waist deep through the drowned fields behind the house, she gained the uplands, and rushed dripping along the ridge to the next farm, where, as she knew, a boat was kept.

This farmhouse, perched on a bluff, was safe from all floods; and the farmer was at home, congratulating himself.

Before he quite knew what was happening, he found himself being dragged to the boat--for his neighbor was a strenuous woman, whom few in the settlement presumed to argue with, and it was plain to him now that she was laboring under an unwonted excitement.