a song about us, and sing
it on winter nights as they pass round the wassail bowl in front of the
cabin fire."

Noel wanted to very much; but I don't think it was altogether for
generousness, but because he wanted to see how the sluices opened. Yet
perhaps I do but wrong the boy.

We sat and looked at the barge a bit longer, and then Oswald said, well,
he didn't mind going back to the lock and having a look at the
crow-bars. You see Oswald did not propose this; he did not even care
very much about it when Alice suggested it.

But when we got to Stoneham Lock, and Dicky dragged the two heavy
crow-bars from among the elder bushes behind a fallen tree, and began to
pound away at the sluice of the lock, Oswald felt it would not be manly
to stand idly apart. So he took his turn.

[Illustration: "DICKY DRAGGED THE TWO HEAVY BARS"]

It was very hard work, but we opened the lock sluices, and we did not
drop the crow-bar into the lock either, as I have heard of being done by
older and sillier people.

The water poured through the sluices all green and solid, as if it had
been cut with a knife, and where it fell on the water underneath the
white foam spread like a moving counterpane. When we had finished the
lock we did the weir--which is wheels and chains--and the water pours
through over the stones in a magnificent water-fall and sweeps out all
round the weir-pool.

The sight of the foaming water-falls was quite enough reward for our
heavy labors, even without the thought of the unspeakable gratitude that
the bargees would feel to us when they got back to their barge and found
her no longer a stick-in-the-mud, but bounding on the free bosom of the
river.

When we had opened all the sluices we gazed awhile on the beauties of
nature, and then went home, because we thought it would be more truly
noble and good not to wait to be thanked for our kind and devoted
action--and besides, it was nearly dinner-time, and Oswald thought it
was going to rain.

On the way home we agreed not to tell the others, because it would be
like boasting of our good acts.

"They will know all about it," Noel said, "when they hear us being
blessed by the grateful bargees, and the tale of the Unknown Helpers is
being told by every village fireside. And then they can write it in the
Golden Deed book."

So we went home. Denny and H. O. had thought better of it, and they were
fishing in the moat. They did not catch anything.

Oswald is very