n't mean to
help you a bit till you promise to let me alone. Now then!" and Ben's
face grew stern with his remembered wrongs as he grimly eyed his
discomfited foe.

"I'll promise fast enough if you won't tell anyone about this," answered
Sam, surveying himself and his surroundings with great disgust.

"I shall do as I like about that."

"Then I won't promise a thing! I'm not going to have the whole school
laughing at me," protested Sam, who hated to be ridiculed even more than
Ben did.

"Very well; good-night!" and Ben walked off with his hands in his
pockets as coolly as if the bog was Sam's favorite retreat.

"Hold on, don't be in such a hurry!" shouted Sam, seeing little hope of
rescue if he let this chance go.

"All right!" and back came Ben, ready for further negotiations.

"I'll promise not to plague you, if you'll promise not to tell on me.
Is that what you want?"

"Now I come to think of it, there is one thing more. I like to make a
good bargain when I begin," said Ben, with a shrewd air. "You must
promise to keep Mose quiet, too. He follows your lead, and if you tell
him to stop it he will. If I was big enough, I'd make you hold your
tongues. I ain't, so we'll try this way."

"Yes, Yes, I'll see to Mose. Now, bring on a rail, there's a good
fellow. I've got a horrid cramp in my legs," began Sam, thinking he had
bought help dearly, yet admiring Ben's cleverness in making the most of
his chance.

Ben brought the rail, but, just as he was about to lay it from the
main-land to the nearest tussock, he stopped, saying, with the naughty
twinkle in his black eyes again, "One more little thing must be settled
first, and then I'll get you ashore. Promise you won't plague the girls
either, 'specially Bab and Betty. You pull their hair, and they don't
like it."

"Don't neither! Wouldn't touch that Bab for a dollar; she scratches and
bites like a mad cat," was Sam's sulky reply.

"Glad of it; she can take care of herself. Betty can't; and if you
touch one of her pig-tails I'll up and tell right out how I found you
snivelling in the ma'sh like a great baby. So now!" and Ben emphasized
his threat with a blow of the suspended rail which splashed the water
over poor Sam, quenching his last spark of resistance.

"Stop! I will!--I will!"

"True as you live and breathe!" demanded Ben, sternly binding him by the
most solemn oath he knew.

"True as I live and breathe," echoed Sam, dolefully relinquishing his