st. "Lucky I've got you. You
always keep cool. How do you manage to do it?"

Henry Burns smiled, but made no reply. Instead, he pointed ahead to
where the Ellison brothers, putting their strength into their work, were
showing several rods of clear water between them and the two nearest
canoes, which were going along side by side.

"They've got the race won in the first five minutes," said Henry Burns.
"See Tom and Bob take it easy till they get limbered up."

The two thus indicated were, indeed, setting an example worthy to be
followed. They had started off at an easy, regular stroke, one which
they could keep up for hours and increase when they should see fit. They
were paying no attention to the leading canoe, but were exchanging a
word or two with the Warrens, who were striving to imitate their course
and pace.

The first mile and a half that intervened between the starting point and
the Ellison dam was quickly covered. The Ellison boys, still leading,
were out on shore and carrying their canoe up the bank when the others
were still some rods away. It was a steep pitch of the shore, and Tom
and Bob, when they came to it, took it leisurely, saving their wind. The
others followed, in like fashion. Harvey and Henry Burns were the last
to make the portage.

Once around the dam, on higher level, the canoes were launched again,
and the race continued.

A little way up the shore from the dam, Tom and Bob and the Warren boys,
some distance ahead of the rear canoe, saw an odd little figure swinging
and swaying in the top of a birch tree overhanging the water. The
Ellison boys had passed her unnoticed. Her bit of skirt fluttering, and
her hair waving, showed that the occupant of this novel swing was a
girl.

All at once, to their horror, she seemed to slip and fall. Down she came
from her perch, struck the water with a splash and sank beneath the
surface.

Tom and Bob, driving their paddles into the water with desperate energy,
darted on ahead of the Warren boys, who bent to the paddles and shot
after them. The two canoes fairly flew through the water, while the four
occupants gazed anxiously ahead over the surface for signs of the girl's
reappearance.

To their amazement, a laughing voice hailed them most unexpectedly, from
shore. They looked toward the bank, where, just emerging, dripping wet,
the girl was waving a hand to them.

"How was that for a dive?" she called, pushing her wet hair back from
her eyes, an