plunge, and getting up, staggering and
bewildered, saw, as through the haze of a dream, a boy swimming after
the boat, which had gone down with the slow current. I saw him
overtake it, scramble into it in midstream, and handle the oars as to
the manner born. When he had brought it back to the spot where I
stood, I knew that Peter Mason was my deliverer. Quite recovered by
this time from my slight attack of drowning, I got again into the
boat, and leaving the oars to Peter, was rowed across and landed.
There was no further difficulty. The man, alarmed, I suppose, at the
danger I had run, recalled his dog; we bundled in the clothes; Peter
rowed them across; Rory, the big boy, took the water after the boat,
and I plunged in again above the dam. For the whole of that summer and
part of the following winter, Peter was my hero, to the forgetting
even of my friend Turkey. I took every opportunity of joining him in
his games, partly from gratitude, partly from admiration, but more
than either from the simple human attraction of the boy. It was some
time before he led me into any real mischief, but it came at last.

CHAPTER XVI

I Go Down Hill

It came in the following winter.

My father had now begun to teach me as well as Tom, but I confess I
did not then value the privilege. I had got much too fond of the
society of Peter Mason, and all the time I could command I spent with
him. Always full of questionable frolic, the spirit of mischief
gathered in him as the dark nights drew on. The sun, and the wind, and
the green fields, and the flowing waters of summer kept him within
bounds; but when the ice and the snow came, when the sky was grey with
one cloud, when the wind was full of needle-points of frost and the
ground was hard as a stone, when the evenings were dark, and the sun
at noon shone low down and far away in the south, then the demon of
mischief awoke in the bosom of Peter Mason, and, this winter, I am
ashamed to say, drew me also into the net.

Nothing very bad was the result before the incident I am about to
relate. There must have been, however, a gradual declension towards
it, although the pain which followed upon this has almost obliterated
the recollection of preceding follies. Nobody does anything bad all at
once. Wickedness needs an apprenticeship as well as more difficult
trades.

It was in January, not long after the shortest day, the sun setting
about half-past three o'clock. At three school was