ed.

"Then why didn't you?" asked Buck.

"He didn't just because I asked him as a favor to me not to say a word
to a single soul," broke in the eager Billy, just then. "You know, Buck,
father told me he'd whip me if ever he heard of my tryin' that cranky
canoe of yours. And I was afraid he'd do it, too, if he heard how near I
was to bein' drownded."

"Well, that sure just gets me!" muttered Buck, who found it hard to
understand how a fellow could hide his light under a bushel, and not
"blow his own horn," when he had jumped into the river, and pulled out a
drowning boy. "Say, is that so too, Fenton; did you keep mum just
because Billy here asked you to?"

"That was the only reason," replied Fred; "but you must give some of the
credit to Bristles Carpenter, who couldn't swim much then; but he waded
in, and helped to get us ashore. And he pulled the canoe in, too. Then
we took it down to the place you keep it; while Billy played by himself
in the warm sun till his clothes got dry; didn't you, Billy?"

"Just what I did," said the small boy, cheerfully. "And not a person
ever knowed I'd been in the water. Oh! I've always thought it was mighty
nice in Fred; and it used to make me feel so bad when I heard you
talkin' about him the way you did, Buck. More'n a few times I just
wanted to tell you all about it, to show you he couldn't be the mean boy
you said; but I dassent; I was scared you'd think you had to tell father
on me."

As he knelt there Buck was fighting an inward battle; and the enemy
with which he grappled was his own baser nature. Fred did not have a
single fear as to how it was bound to come out. He knew that Buck could
not deny the obligation that had been so unexpectedly forced upon him.

Then Buck suddenly reached down. He had made up his mind, and was even
then groping for the end of the vine which Fred was reaching up to him.

Once he got this firmly in his hands, he simply said:

"Now, climb away, Fenton!"

Fred waited for no second invitation. He was not foolish enough to
decline a favor that came within reach. Possibly Buck's new resolution
might cool off more or less, if given time; and Fred dared not take the
risk.

So he immediately began the task of drawing himself up the short
distance that lay between his eager hands and the rim of the pit.

And Buck, having braced himself firmly, with his foot against a solid
spur of rock, held through the trying ordeal. Fred in a short time was
clamb