d sneak in at the back door with our tails between
our legs, like two beaten hounds. There are those at home who would
sorrow for us, and yet feel that they despised us. We came out here to
win, and win we will, if our perseverance will do it."

"Well, haven't we tried, and hasn't everything failed?"

"No, boy," cried the young man excitedly. "Look here: my story is of a
party of American loafers down by a river. Come, I never told you
that."

"No," said Dyke, raising his brown face from where he rested it upon his
arm.

"That's better. Then you can be interested still."

"One needs something to interest one in this miserable, dried-up
desert," cried the boy.

"Miserable, dried-up desert!" said his brother, speaking in a low deep
voice, as he gazed right away through the transparent air at the
glorious colours where the sun sank in a canopy of amber and gold. "No,
Dicky, it has its beauties, in spite of all you say."

"Oh Joe!" cried the boy, "what a tiresome old chap you are. Didn't you
say you were going to tell me a story about some Americans down by a
river? Oh, how I should like to get to a mill-race and have a bathe.
Do go on."

"Ah! to be sure. Well, I only want you to take notice of one part of
it. The rest is brag."

"Then it's a moral story," cried Dyke, in a disappointed tone.

"Yes, if you like; but it may be fresh to you."

"'Tain't about ostriches, is it?"

"No.--They were throwing stones."

"What!--the loafers?"

"Yes, from a wharf, to see who could throw farthest, and one man, who
was looking on, sneered at them, and began to boast about how far he
could throw. They laughed at him, and one of them made himself very
objectionable and insulting, with the result that the boasting man said,
if it came to the point, he could throw the other fellow right across
the river. Of course there was a roar of laughter at this, and one chap
bet a dollar that he could not."

"And of course he couldn't," said Dyke, who forgot his prickly heat and
irritation. "But you said it was all brag. Well?"

"The boastful fellow, as soon as the wager was laid, seized the other by
the waistband, heaved him up, and pitched him off the wharf into the
river, amidst roars of laughter, which were kept up as the man came
drenched out of the river, and asked to be paid.

"`Oh no,' said the other; `I didn't say I'd do it the first time. But I
kin dew it, and I will dew it, if I try till to-morrow morning;