all I go, Bob? Sometimes the tide runs up, and
sometimes it runs down."

"Yes, and I'll make you run up and down. You're a nice un, you are! I
just shet my eyes for a few minutes, and trust you to look after the
boat, and when I wake up again you're fass asleep, and the boat gone."

"I'm very sorry, Bob, but I was so tired."

"Tired! You tired! What on? Here, go and find that boat!"

Dexter started off, and ran along the bank in one direction, while Bob
went in the other, and at the end of half an hour Dexter came back
feeling miserable and despondent as he had never felt before.

"Found it, Bob!" he said.

For answer his companion threw himself down upon his face, and began
beating the ground with his fists, as if it were a drum.

"I've looked along there as far as I could go," said Dexter sadly.
"What shall we do!"

"I wish this here was your stoopid head," snarled Bob, as he hammered
away at the bare ground beneath the tree. "I never see such a chap!"

"But what shall we do?" said Dexter again.

"Do? I dunno, and I don't care. You lost the boat, and you've got to
find it."

"Let's go on together and walk all along the bank till we find somebody
who has seen it."

"And when we do find 'em d'yer think they'll be such softs as to give it
to us back again!" This was a startling question.

"I know 'em," said Bob. "They'll want to know where we got it from, and
how we come by it, and all sorts o' nonsense o' that kind. Say we ain't
no right to it. I know what they'll say."

"But p'r'aps it's floating about?"

"P'r'aps you're floating about!" cried Bob, with a snarl. "Boat like
that don't go floating about without some one in it, and if it does some
one gets hold of it, and says it's his."

This was a terrible check to their adventurous voyage, as unexpected as
it was sudden, and Dexter looked dolefully up in his companion's face.

"I know'd how it would be, and I was a stoopid to bring such a chap as
you," continued Bob, who seemed happiest when he was scolding. "You've
lost the boat, and we shall have to go back."

"Go back!" cried Dexter, with a look of horror, as he saw in imagination
the stern countenance of the doctor, his tutor's searching eyes, Helen's
look of reproach, and Sir James Danby waiting to ask him what had become
of the boat, while Master Edgar seemed full of triumph at his downfall.

"Go back?" No he could not go back. He felt as if he would rather jump
into the ri