tually
sprang back.

Two childish voices were shouting as loud as possible: "Let us out! Oh,
let--us--o-o-out!"

"Come on, Dot!" Sammy Pinkney cried, seeing the opening above their
heads. "We can get out now."

"And we'll get right off this horrid boat, Sammy," declared Dot. "I
don't ever mean to go off and be pirates with you again--never. Me and
my Alice-doll don't like it at all."

[Illustration: "There was a rush for the open hatchway and a chorus of
excited voices"]

There was a rush for the open hatchway and a chorus of excited voices.

"Oh, Dot, Dot! Are you there, dear?" cried Ruth.

"You little plague, Sammy Pinkney!" gasped Agnes. "I've a mind to box
your ears for you!"

"Easy, easy," advised Neale, who was dripping wet from his waist down.
"Let us see if they are whole and hearty before we turn on the
punishment works. Give us your hands, Dottie."

He lifted the little girl, still hugging her Alice-doll, out of the hold
and kissed her himself before he put her into Ruth's arms.

"Come on up, now, Sammy, and take your medicine," Neale urged, stooping
over the hatchway.

"Huh! Don't you kiss _me_, Neale O'Neil," growled Sammy, trying to bring
the potatoes and the basket of fruit both up the ladder with him. "I'll
get slobbered over enough when I get home--first."

"And what second?" asked Luke, vastly amused as well as relieved.

But Sammy was silent on that score. Nor did he ever reveal to the Corner
House girls and their friends just what happened to him when he got back
to his own home.

Mr. Sorber was shaking hands with them all in congratulatory mood. Cap'n
Bill Quigg was lighting his pipe and settling down against the scorched
side of the cabin to smoke. Dot was passed around like a doll, from hand
to hand. Louise looked on in mild amazement.

"If I'd knowed that little girl was down in the hold, I sure would have
had her out," she said to Neale. "My! ain't she pretty. And what a
scrumptious doll!"

Dot saw the canalboat girl in her faded dress, and the lanky boatman,
and she had to express her curiosity.

"Oh, please!" she cried. "Are you and that man pirates, like Sammy and
me!"

"No," said Louise, wonderingly. "Pap's a Lutheran and I went to a
'piscopalean Sunday-school last winter."

The laugh raised by the excited party from the Corner House quenched any
further curiosity on Dot's part. And just here Mr. Sorber suggested a
most delightful thing.

"Now, Neale wants to come