d looking at them roguishly.

"Bully!" exclaimed George Warren, wiping the drops of perspiration from
his forehead. "We thought you had fallen. My, but it gave me a scare."

The girl's eyes danced with merriment. Then espying the other canoe
coming up, she called, "Hello, you back again? Look out Ellison don't
catch you."

"It's Bess Thornton," said Henry Burns, and the two boys called out a
greeting to her.

"Say, do you know Tim Reardon?" she asked abruptly.

"Why, yes," answered Henry Burns. "Should say we did."

"Well," said Bess Thornton, "tell him you saw me dive from the tree,
will you? He didn't think I dared, when I told him." Then she added,
laughing, "Don't get rained on again. But if you do, remember the mill."
And she danced away, wringing the water from the hem of her short
skirt.

"Confound her!" exclaimed Harvey. "Look at the start Jim and John have
got. Come on, Henry."

They pushed on again, Tom and Bob soon taking the lead of the three rear
canoes, with a strong steady stroke that meant business. The first canoe
was by this time a quarter of a mile ahead.

CHAPTER VIII

CONQUERING THE RAPIDS

This part of the stream, for some two miles above the Ellison dam, was
deep, still water, lying between quite steep banks, and there was little
perceptible current. So that now, the water being unruffled by any wind,
the four canoes shot ahead at good speed, retaining generally their
relative positions.

Tom and Bob gradually quickened their stroke, hoping to make some slight
but sure gain on the leaders; but the Ellison brothers were evidently of
a mind to hold their lead as long as possible, and continued to do so.
This, however, was at the cost of some extra exertion, which might tell
in the long run.

In the course of half an hour, after leaving the dam, the current began
to flow faster against them; now and then it came down over shoals of
quite an incline, so that they made better headway by getting out their
setting-poles and using them, instead of the paddles.

Then, at a point a mile farther up stream, they came to rapids of some
considerable extent, flowing quite swiftly and boiling here and there
around sunken rocks. The Ellison brothers had avoided this place, and
were to be seen now, on the right bank of the shore, carrying their
canoe with difficulty.

The shore here was broken up by the out-cropping of ledges, amid the
breaks of which a canoe must be carried with great c