l the reaches
of his shaking anatomy. He had passed quite beyond the hearing of his
father's commands and reproaches, and the wash and rush of the river
came up to him out of the silence.

"Hullo!" cried the boy, pausing irresolutely.

Then seemingly from the earth at his very feet came a faint answer to
his call, and Custer, forcing his way through a rank growth of weeds and
briers, stood on the brink of a deep gully that a small brook had worn
for itself on its way to the river below. In the bed of this brook was a
dark object that Custer could barely distinguish to be the figure of a
man. A bruised and bleeding face was upturned.

"Give me your hand--" gasped the man.

Custer knelt on the bank and grasping a tuft of grass to steady himself
extended his free hand.

"Are you hurt bad?" he asked.

"I don't know--" gasped the man, as he endeavored to draw himself up out
of the bed of the brook.

But after a moment of fruitless exertion he sank back groaning.

"Go for help!" he said, in a painful whisper. "You are not strong enough
for this."

"How did you get here?" asked Custer.

"I fell off the railroad bridge, the current landed me here; where am I,
anyhow?"

"At the brick slaughter-house," said Custer.

"I thought so; can't you get some one to help you?"

But Custer, his reasonable curiosity satisfied, was already on his way
back to the road. "If only pa has not driven off!" But the senior
Shrimplin had not moved from the spot where Custer had left him five
minutes before.

"Is that you, son?" he asked, as Custer appeared at the fence.

"Come here, quick!" commanded the boy.

"For what?" inquired Mr. Shrimplin.

"You needn't be afraid, it's only a man who's fallen off the iron
bridge. He's down in the bed of the slaughter-house run. I can't get him
out alone!"

"I'll bet he's good and drunk!" said the little lamplighter.

"No, he ain't, and he's mighty badly hurt!" said the boy hotly.

"Of course, of course, Custer!" said Mr. Shrimplin. "He'd a been killed
though if he hadn't been drunk."

He climbed out of his cart, and clambered over the fence. Something in
Custer's manner warned him that any allusions of a jocular nature would
prove highly distasteful to his son, and he followed silently as Custer
led the way down to the brook.

"Here's where he is!" said the boy halting. "You get down beside
him--you're strongest, and I'll stay here and help pull him up while you
lift!"

"That's th