down when there's two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up.
It's fun then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn't.

I'd die really of fright."
"Of course it would be romantic," conceded Jane Andrews, "but I

know I couldn't keep still. I'd be popping up every minute or so
to see where I was and if I wasn't drifting too far out. And you

know, Anne, that would spoil the effect."
"But it's so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine," mourned

Anne. "I'm not afraid to float down and I'd love to be Elaine.
But it's ridiculous just the same. Ruby ought to be Elaine

because she is so fair and has such lovely long golden hair--
Elaine had `all her bright hair streaming down,' you know.

And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person cannot
be a lily maid."

"Your complexion is just as fair as Ruby's," said Diana
earnestly, "and your hair is ever so much darker than it used to

be before you cut it."
"Oh, do you really think so?" exclaimed Anne, flushing

sensitively with delight. "I've sometimes thought it was
myself--but I never dared to ask anyone for fear she would tell

me it wasn't. Do you think it could be called auburn now, Diana?"
"Yes, and I think it is real pretty," said Diana, looking

admiringly at the short, silky curls that clustered over
Anne's head and were held in place by a very jaunty black

velvet ribbon and bow.
They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope,

where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the
bank; at its tip was a small woodenplatform built out into the

water for the convenience of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby
and Jane were spending the midsummer afternoon with Diana, and

Anne had come over to play with them.
Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on

and about the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell
having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back

pasture in the spring. Anne had sat among the stumps and wept,
not without an eye to the romance of it; but she was speedily

consoled, for, after all, as she and Diana said, big girls of
thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish

amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports
to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout

over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about
in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.

It was Anne's idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied
Tennyson's poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent

of Education having prescribed it in the English course for the
Prince Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it

and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there
was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the

fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had
become very real people to them, and Anne was devoured by

secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot. Those
days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.

Anne's plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered
that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would

drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand
itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in

the pond. They had often gone down like this and nothing could
be more convenient for playing Elaine.

"Well, I'll be Elaine," said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for,
although she would have been delighted to play the principal

character, yet her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and
this, she felt, her limitations made impossible. "Ruby, you must

be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot.
But first you must be the brothers and the father. We can't have

the old dumb servitor because there isn't room for two in the flat
when one is lying down. We must pall the barge all its length

in blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother's will
be just the thing, Diana."

The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the
flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands

folded over her breast.
"Oh, she does look really dead," whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,

watching the still, white little face under the flickering
shadows of the birches. "It makes me feel frightened, girls.

Do you suppose it's really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde
says that all play-acting is abominably wicked."

"Ruby, you shouldn't talk about Mrs. Lynde," said Anne severely.
"It spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before

Mrs. Lynde was born. Jane, you arrange this. It's silly for
Elaine to be talking when she's dead."

Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was
none, but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an

excellent substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then,
but the effect of a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne's folded

hands was all that could be desired.
"Now, she's all ready," said Jane. "We must kiss her quiet brows

and, Diana, you say, `Sister, farewell forever,' and Ruby, you say,
`Farewell, sweet sister,' both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly can.

Anne, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine `lay as though
she smiled.' That's better. Now push the flat off."

The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old
embedded stake in the process. Diana and Jane and Ruby only waited

long enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge
before scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to

the lower headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King,
they were to be in readiness to receive the lily maid.

For a few minutes Anne, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance
of her situation to the full. Then something happened not at all

romantic. The flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was
necessary for Elaine to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth

of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly at
a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water

was literally pouring. That sharp stake at the landing had torn
off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Anne did not know

this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was in a
dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long

before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the
oars? Left behind at the landing!

Anne gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she
was white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession.

There was one chance--just one.
"I was horribly frightened," she told Mrs. Allan the next day,

"and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the
bridge and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs.

Allan, most earnestly, but I didn't shut my eyes to pray, for I
knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float

close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it.
You know the piles are just old tree trunks and there are lots of

knots and old branch stubs on them. It was proper to pray, but
I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it. I

just said, `Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile and
I'll do the rest,' over and over again. Under such circumstances

you don't think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was
answered, for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and

I flung the scarf and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up
on a big providential stub. And there I was, Mrs. Allan,

clinging to that slippery old pile with no way of getting up or
down. It was a very unromantic position, but I didn't think