mise to
keep you in mind, and if I do want to get shut of Nicodemus you'll have
first chance. It's goin' to be money in my pocket if I do let him go,
because he costs me like anything. Oh! listen to Steve, would you; he's
sure enough gone and fallen in, after all your warnin' him to go slow!"

It seemed to be just as Bandy-legs said, if one could judge from the
tremendous amount of splashing that came to their ears, Steve being shut
out from their view temporarily by a thick clump of alders that grew on
the brink of a little trickling stream emptying into the pond just
there.

"Let's hurry around and see if he needs any help!" suggested Max.

"He'll be shivering in the cold, even after he crawls out," said
Bandy-legs; "and we'll have to see that he gets dried off. We're
following at your heels, Max!"

"S-s-sure we are!" added Toby, who just then happened to be carrying the
basket in which reposed the hind-quarters of all their previous
greenback victims.

CHAPTER II

STEVE PLAYS HERO

"We're coming to the rescue, Steve! Keep a stiff upper-lip, old chum!
Hold up, and we'll help you climb out, Steve!"

Bandy-legs was shouting cheerfully in this strain as he hurried after
Max, with slower Toby bringing up the rear. The splashing had entirely
ceased by this time, which would indicate that there must have been a
change in conditions.

"Say, you ain't drowned, are you, Steve?" Bandy-legs continued, as
though gripped by a sudden dreadful fear.

Max turned and called back over his shoulder.

"I can hear water dripping like everything, and I guess he's gone and
crawled out on the bank all right!"

"Sure I have," said Steve just then from behind the bushes; "and I've
got that frog, too. He's worth taking a ducking for, let me tell you.
There never was such a buster of a greenback croaker. If you could hear
him sing out 'more r-rum! more r-rum!' you'd think it was a bass drum
arollin'. Here I am, fellows, dripping wet in the bargain. I must have
slipped, I reckon."

When Max came upon the speaker, and surveyed his soaked figure, he
burst into a shout of laughter.

"Well, I should think you did slip!" he exclaimed; "you're always
slipping, seems like, Steve, and it's because you're in such an awful
hurry to do things that you get into a muss. You certainly are a sight
now, with all that mud on you. If pretty Bessie French could only see
you I can fancy her nose would go up in the air, because that mud isn