ing her hands
and screaming frantically.

"Oh, save her, save her!" she yelled, tearing around the pier like a mad
person, while Tod, hanging on to a post, leaned far over the water and
waved his hand frantically to the boatman.

The fisherman redoubled his efforts and slowly drew nearer the floating
doll, whose long white dress was whirled and tossed about in the eddy.

The boatload of fishermen which they had seen in the distance drew
nearer, and the man in the row-boat communicated to them by shouts and
signs and made them aware of the catastrophe.

The incoming fishermen saw the baby in the water, and saw the two
children screaming and wailing on the pier, and they put forward with
all speed to make a rescue.

Tod and Dotty were really doubled up with laughter, but pretended they
were in agonies of grief as the two boats made desperate attempts to
reach the drowning child.

"The old idiots!" exclaimed Tod; "they might know that a live baby
wouldn't float around like that. It would have sunk long ago."

"Of course it would," agreed Dotty. "Won't they be mad when they get
it!"

The fishermen, having had little experience with French dolls the size
of live babies, assumed, of course, that it was a real child in the
water, and they wasted no time in marvelling as to why it should
continue to ride blithely on top of the waves. They simply put forth
every effort to reach the white object, whatever it might be, but the
perversity of wind and wave continued to thwart them.

At last, however, very near shore, the fishermen drew near enough to
grab the doll and draw it into their boat, just as they rowed in on top
of a huge breaker and beached near the pier.

Tod and Dotty ran swiftly to them, eager to see their chagrin and
dismay at having rescued the doll.

The men were all out on the beach and they showed a belligerent
demeanour as the children appeared.

"Ye little wretches," cried one big rawboned man, "what d'ye mean by
foolin' us like that?"

His manner even more than his words were distinctly threatening, and
Dotty was scared, but Tod answered him directly.

"We didn't fool you! We dropped the doll in the water by accident, and
we sung out there was a doll overboard and we asked a man on shore to
help us get it. If you people thought it was a live baby, that isn't our
fault!"

"That don't go down!" and another man stepped forward and shook his fist
at the children. "Ye know right well ye fooled us