,
rolled down the bank, and snatched the baby from her.

"Don't," said Phyllis, reproachfully; "I'd just got him to sleep."

* * * * * *

Bill came up later talking in a language with which the children were
wholly unfamiliar. He leaped on to the barge and dipped up pails
of water. Peter helped him and they put out the fire. Phyllis, the
bargewoman, and the baby--and presently Bobbie, too--cuddled together in
a heap on the bank.

"Lord help me, if it was me left anything as could catch alight," said
the woman again and again.

But it wasn't she. It was Bill the Bargeman, who had knocked his pipe
out and the red ash had fallen on the hearth-rug and smouldered there
and at last broken into flame. Though a stern man he was just. He did
not blame his wife for what was his own fault, as many bargemen, and
other men, too, would have done.

* * * * * *

Mother was half wild with anxiety when at last the three children turned
up at Three Chimneys, all very wet by now, for Peter seemed to have come
off on the others. But when she had disentangled the truth of what had
happened from their mixed and incoherent narrative, she owned that they
had done quite right, and could not possibly have done otherwise. Nor
did she put any obstacles in the way of their accepting the cordial
invitation with which the bargeman had parted from them.

"Ye be here at seven to-morrow," he had said, "and I'll take you the
entire trip to Farley and back, so I will, and not a penny to pay.
Nineteen locks!"

They did not know what locks were; but they were at the bridge at seven,
with bread and cheese and half a soda cake, and quite a quarter of a leg
of mutton in a basket.

It was a glorious day. The old white horse strained at the ropes, the
barge glided smoothly and steadily through the still water. The sky was
blue overhead. Mr. Bill was as nice as anyone could possibly be. No one
would have thought that he could be the same man who had held Peter by
the ear. As for Mrs. Bill, she had always been nice, as Bobbie said, and
so had the baby, and even Spot, who might have bitten them quite badly
if he had liked.

"It was simply ripping, Mother," said Peter, when they reached home very
happy, very tired, and very dirty, "right over that glorious aqueduct.
And locks--you don't know what they're like. You sink into the ground
and then, w