oice overhead.

"Hello yourself," sang back Andy, looking up.

The driver of the team into which the runaway had so nearly dashed stood
looking down from the bridge planking. His eyes stared wide as Andy
suddenly appeared like a jack-in-the-box.

"Was you in there?" gulped the man.

"I was nowhere else," answered Andy. "Say, mister, where's that horse?"

"Oh, he's all right. See him?"

The man pointed along the other shore of the river bank. Lute had
crossed the bridge. She had now taken herself to some marshy grass
stretches, and was grazing placidly.

Andy was about twenty feet from the shore. He could nearly make it by
jumping from rock to rock, he thought. At one or two places, however,
the current ran strong and deep, and he saw that he might have to do
some swimming.

"See here," he called up to the man on the bridge, "have you got a rope?"

"Yes," nodded the man.

"Long enough to reach down here?"

"I guess so. Let's try. Wait a minute."

He went to his wagon. Shortly he dropped a new stout rope used in
securing hay loads. It had length and to spare.

Andy tied the mail pouch to its end. Then he groped under water in the
wagon box. He managed to fish out the various parcels it held, including
the newspaper bag.

These he sent up first. Then the man at the other end braced the cable
against a railing post. Andy came up the rope with agility.

He stamped and shook the water from his soaked shoes and clothing. The
mail bag he again suspended across his shoulders.

"Hi, another runaway!" suddenly exclaimed his companion.

Andy traced an increasing clatter of a horse's hoofs and wagon wheels to
a rig descending the hill at breakneck speed.

"No," he said. "It's Ripley."

"Who's he?"

"The man who drove that wagon. Stop! stop!" cried Andy, springing into
the middle of the bridge roadway and waving his arms.

The rig came up. It was driven by a man wearing a badge. Andy decided he
was some local police officer. Ripley was fearfully excited and his face
showed it.

"What did you do with that wagon?" sputtered Ripley, jumping to the
plankway.

Andy pointed down at the river bed and then at the distant horse.
Briefly as he could he narrated what had occurred.

Ripley nearly had a fit. He instantly realized that whoever was to blame
for the runaway, it was not Andy.

"Where's the mail?" he asked.

"There's the newspaper bag," said Andy; "here's the registered mail
pouch. Those thieves took