The stone piers of the wooden bridge fell into the water
with a rush, but he never heard it. The bridge floated past him bodily,
but his back was towards it. Like a wretch in sanctuary, he dared not
leave "the footstool of grace," or expose himself to the inroads of the
visible world around him, by opening his eyes.
Alec did not find it so hard as he had expected to keep his boat from
capsizing. But the rapidity with which the banks swept past him was
frightful. The cottage lay on the other side of the Glamour, lower
down, and all that he had to do for a while, was to keep the bows of
his boat down the stream. When he approached the cottage, he drew a
little out of the centre of the current, which, confined within rising
ground, was here fiercer than anywhere above. But out of the current he
could not go; for the cottage lay between the channel of the river and
the mill-race. Except for its relation, however, to the bridge behind
it, which he saw crowded with anxious spectators, he would not have
known where it ought to be--so much was the aspect of everything
altered. He could see that the water was more than half way up the
door, right at which he had resolved to send his boat.
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