When they had cracked and blazed with a fierce, sudden heat, Ann could only break bread-crumbs into a cupful of boiling water and put a few drops of rum in it.

She woke Bart and fed him as she might have fed a baby.

When he lay down again exhausted, with that strange moan which he always gave when he first put back his head, she had the comfort of believing that a better colour came to his cheek than before.
She resolved that if he rested quietly for a few hours and appeared better after the next food she gave him, she would think it safe to cushion the canoe with bracken and take him home.

This thought suggested to her to moor the canoe.
She went down to the creek again, but it was too late.

The water running gently and steadily had done its work, taken the canoe out from among the rushes, and floated it down between the mosses of the swamp.