The reader will find Myrtle's "Vision," as written out at a later period from her recollections, at the end of this chapter.
The night was passing, and she meant to be as far away as possible from the village she had left, before morning.

But the boat, like all craft on country rivers, was leaky, and she had to work until tired, bailing it out, before she was ready for another long effort.

The old tin measure, which was all she had to bail with, leaked as badly as the boat, and her task was a tedious one.

At last she got it in good trim, and sat down to her oars with the determination to pull steadily as long as her strength would hold out.
Hour after hour she kept at her work, sweeping round the long bends where the river was hollowing out one bank and building new shore on the opposite one, so as gradually to shift its channel; by clipper-shaped islands, sharp at the bows looking up stream, sharp too at the stern, looking down,--their shape solving the navigator's problem of least resistance, as a certain young artist had pointed out; by slumbering villages; by outlying farm-houses; between cornfields where the young plants were springing up in little thready fountains; in the midst of stumps where the forest had just been felled; through patches, where the fire of the last great autumnal drought had turned all the green beauty of the woods into brown desolation; and again amidst broad expanses of open meadow stretching as far as the eye could reach in the uncertain light.

A faint yellow tinge was beginning to stain the eastern horizon.
Her boat was floating quietly along, for she had at last taken in her oars, and she was now almost tired out with toil and excitement.