figure than
he was at the dog, plunged into the river, and swam or waded from the
inhospitable shore. Once in the embrace of the stream, some of them
thoughtlessly turned and mocked the enemy, forgetting how much they
were still in his power. Indignant at the tyrant, I stood up in the
"limpid wave", and assured the aquatic company of a welcome to the
opposite bank. So far all was very well. But their clothes! They,
alas! were upon the bank they had left!

The spirit of a host was upon me, for now I regarded them all as my
guests.

"You come ashore when you like," I said; "I will see what can be done
about your clothes."

I knew that just below the dam lay a little boat built by the miller's
sons. It was clumsy enough, but in my eyes a marvel of engineering
art. On the opposite side stood the big boy braving the low-bred cur
which barked and growled at him with its ugly head stretched out like
a serpent's; while his owner, who was probably not so unkind as we
thought him, stood enjoying the fun of it all. Reckoning upon the big
boy's assistance, I scrambled out of the water, and sped, like
Achilles of the swift foot, for the boat. I jumped in and seized the
oars, intending to row across, and get the big boy to throw the
clothes of the party into the boat. But I had never handled an oar in
my life, and in the middle passage--how it happened I cannot tell--I
found myself floundering in the water.

Now, although you might expect that the water being dammed back just
here, it would be shallow below the dam, it was just the opposite. Had
the bottom been hard, it would have been shallow; but as the bottom
was soft and muddy, the rush of the water over the dam in the
winter-floods had here made a great hollow. There was besides another
weir a very little way below which again dammed the water back; so
that the depth was greater here than in almost any other part within
the ken of the village boys. Indeed there were horrors afloat
concerning its depth. I was but a poor swimmer, for swimming is a
natural gift, and is not equally distributed to all. I might have done
better, however, but for those stories of the awful gulf beneath me.
I was struggling and floundering, half-blind, and quite deaf, with a
sense of the water constantly getting up and stopping me, whatever I
wanted to do, when I felt myself laid hold of by the leg, dragged
under water, and a moment after landed safe on the bank. Almost the
same moment I heard a