The noise of the bar-room ceased at an early hour and the little mountain town grew quiet but Bruce was not conscious of the change. It was midnight--and long past--well toward morning when in the sleep which had been so profound he heard his mother calling, calling in the same dear, sweet way that she used to call him when, tired out with following his father on long rides, he had overslept in the morning.
"Bruce! Bruce-boy! Up-adaisy!"
He stirred uneasily and imagined that he answered.
The voice came again and there was pleading in the shrill, staccato notes: "Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!"
The cry from dreamland roused his consciousness at last. He sat up startled. There was no thought in his mind but the boats--the boats! In seconds, not minutes, he was in his clothes and stumbling down the dark stairway. There was something ghostly in the hollow echo of his footsteps on the plank sidewalk as he ran through the main street of the still village.
He saw that one boat was gone from its mooring before he reached the bank! He could see plainly the space where it had been. The other boats were safe--but the fourth--. He stopped short on the bank for one brief second weak with relief. The fourth barge, which was holding it temporarily. The water by some miracle it had jammed against the third barge which was holding it temporarily. The water was slapping against the side that was turned to the stream and the other was bumping, bumping against the stern of the third boat but the loose barge was working a little closer to the current with each bump. A matter of five minutes more at the most and it would have been started on its journey to destruction.
Bruce sprang to the stern of the third barge and dragged the loose bow-line from the water. It was shorter by many feet--the stout, new rope had been cut! It was not necessary to strike a match--the starlight was sufficient to show him that. He stared at it, unable to credit his own eyes. He scrambled over the machinery to the stern. The stern-line was the same--cut square and clean. If further evidence was needed, it was furnished by the severed portion, which was still tied around a bush.
There was no more sleep for Bruce that night. Bewildered, dumfounded by the discovery, he rolled himself in a "tarp" and laid down on the boat's platform. So far as he knew he had not an enemy in the town. There seemed absolutely no reasonable explanation for the act.