first motions will show whether or not he is a swimmer. It had not
occurred to the Master that anyone reared in the North Jersey
lake-country should not have at least enough knowledge of swimming to
carry him a few yards. But, even as many sailors cannot swim a stroke,
so many an inlander, born and brought up within sight of fresh water,
has never taken the trouble to grasp the simplest rudiments of
natation. And such a man, very evidently, was Homer Wefers, Township
Head Constable.

His howl of crass panic was not needed to prove this to the Master. His
every wild antic showed it. But that same terror-stricken screech was
required to set forth the true situation to the one member of the trio
who had learned from birth to judge by sound and by scent, rather than
by mere sight.

With no good grace, the Master yanked off his own coat and waistcoat,
and bent to unstrap his hiking boots. He did not relish the prospect of
a wetting, for the mere sake of saving from death this atrocious
trespasser. He knew the man could probably keep afloat for at least a
minute longer. And he was not minded to shorten the period of fear by
ripping off his own outer garments with any melodramatic haste.

As he undid the first boot-latchet, he felt the Mistress's tense
fingers on his shoulder.

"Wait!" she exhorted

Astounded at this cold-blooded counsel from his tender-hearted wife, he
looked up, and followed the direction of her eagerly pointing hand.

"Look!" she was exulting. "It'll all solve itself! See if it doesn't.
Look! He can't shoot Laddie, after--after--"

The Master was barely in time to see Lad swirl along the dock with
express-train speed and spring far out into the lake.

The dog struck water, a bare ten inches from Wefers' madly tossing
head. The constable, in his crazy panic, flung both bony arms about the
dog. And, man and collie together disappeared under the surface, in a
swirl of churned foam.

The Mistress cried aloud, at this hideous turn her pretty plan had
taken. The Master, one shoe off and one shoe on, hobbled at top pace
toward the dock.

As he reached the foot of the lawn, Lad's head and shoulders came into
view above the little whirlpool caused by the sinking bodies' suction.
And, at the same moment, the convulsed features of Homer Wefers showed
through the eddy. The man was thrashing and twisting in a way that
turned the lake around him into a white maelstrom.

As the Master set foot on the dock h