actually in the tub, and then, daring him to
race back and see her floating about in the shallow water.

Max and Jack had wagered a quantity of marbles that no girl, not even
Gwen Harcourt, would dare to float in the rough old tub.

When Max reached the place where Jack had promised to wait for him,
Jack was no where to be seen.

"Scamp!" cried Max. "He's gone off so as not to pay over those marbles
I won. Well, he'll not get off so easy, for I'll find him, and _make_
him pay!"

With never a thought of Gwen, he started along the beach to search for
Jack.

"Well, I'd not be mean enough to skin out like that," he cried as he
hurried over the hard, damp sands. He thought it very mean to elude
paying the little bet, and as he ran, he told himself that he would
have promptly paid the marbles if he had owed them to Jack, which was
true.

Jack was mischievous, but he would never have left a little girl in
the plight in which Max, with all his boasting, had left Gwen.

And although Max Deland searched in every place where Jack was likely
to be, he did not find him.

"I'll not hunt for him!" he cried at last, "but I'll make him pay when
I catch him!"

"Max! Max Deland!"

The voice was shrill and piping.

"Hello! Where are you?" Max shouted in reply, and the trim waitress
from her position on the ledge, cried back;

"It's not where I am, but where you are that's worrying your mother.
You're the first boy I ever saw that had to be called to dinner. Come
in!"

She turned and ran into the house, while Max rushed toward the big
dining-room.

He thought of Gwen during dinner, but he felt no fear for her safety.
He believed that she had soon become tired of floating in the shallow
water, had sprung from the leaky tub, and for hours had been playing
with her friends.

That was not the case, however. Gwen, crouching in the tub, had waited
quite patiently, watching for Max who was to return with Jack, while
the tub bobbed and danced on the shallow water, and for a time she had
found it rather amusing.

The clumsy craft had floated lightly, now toward the beach, now away,
and she felt no fear because as often as a receding wave took her a
few feet from the beach, an incoming wave brought her back.

Then the unexpected happened.

The tide had been turning, and a big wave snatched at the tub, bearing
it farther out than it had yet been, while the next inrolling wave
went up onto the beach without so much as touchin