uting for us."

"Not they! That's a falconer's call. There's another whistle! See,
there's the hawk. She's going down the wind, as I'm alive," and Stephen
began to bound wildly along, making all the sounds and calls by which
falcons were recalled, and holding up as a lure a lapwing which he had
knocked down. Ambrose, by no means so confident in bog-trotting as his
brother, stood still to await him, hearing the calls and shouts of the
falconer coming nearer, and presently seeing a figure, flying by the
help of a pole over the pools and dykes that here made some attempt at
draining the waste. Suddenly, in mid career over one of these broad
ditches, there was a collapse, and a lusty shout for help as the form
disappeared. Ambrose instantly perceived what had happened, the leaping
pole had broken to the downfall of its owner. Forgetting all his doubts
as to bogholes and morasses, he grasped his own pole, and sprang from
tussock to tussock, till he had reached the bank of the ditch or water-
course in which the unfortunate sportsman was floundering. He was a
large, powerful man, but this was of no avail, for the slough afforded
no foothold. The further side was a steep bank built up of sods, the
nearer sloped down gradually, and though it was not apparently very
deep, the efforts of the victim to struggle out had done nothing but
churn up a mass of black muddy water in which he sank deeper every
moment, and it was already nearly to his shoulders when with a cry of
joy, half choked however, by the mud, he cried, "Ha! my good lad! Are
there any more of ye?"

"Not nigh, I fear," said Ambrose, beholding with some dismay the breadth
of the shoulders which were all that appeared above the turbid water.

"Soh! Lie down, boy, behind that bunch of osier. Hold out thy pole.
Let me see thine hands. Thou art but a straw, but, our Lady be my
speed! Now hangs England on a pair of wrists!"

There was a great struggle, an absolute effort for life, and but for the
osier stump Ambrose would certainly have been dragged into the water,
when the man had worked along the pole, and grasping his hands, pulled
himself upwards. Happily the sides of the dyke became harder higher up,
and did not instantly yield to the pressure of his knees, and by the
time Ambrose's hands and shoulders felt nearly wrenched from their
sockets, the stem of the osier had been attained, and in another minute,
the rescued man, bareheaded, plastered with m