enough! Haven't tumbled out
of a balloon, have ye? Look 's if ye'd got soused, anyhow, and 'd
ought to get under cover."

Then Jim took up the tale and in a moment had explained all. He
finished by asking:

"Is there any house near where we can take this boy? He's been
overcome with the wet and has done a lot of rowin', to-day, that he
ain't used to. Is it far to Deer-Copse?"

"Yes, a good mile or more. But my house ain't so far. We'll take him
right there. Fetch some them saplings piled yonder. Get that blanket's
tumbled out By's wagon. Fix a stretcher, no time."

Laziness seemed stamped all over this man's appearance but he wasn't
lazy now. It seemed he might have often made such stretchers as this
he so promptly manufactured by tying the four corners of the blanket
upon the crossed saplings. The blanket was wet, of course, but so was
poor Gerald; and in a jiffy they had laid him upon it and started off
through the woods.

The hunter carried the head of the stretcher by hands held behind him
and Jim the foot. Melvin courageously shouldered the cage of monkeys
which he would gladly have left behind save for Gerald's partnership
in them. The Cap'n wearily stumped along behind, sodden and forlorn,
more homesick than ever for his old city haunts.

"Byny" was left behind, his fare still uncollected, to trudge home on
foot to his belated milking. Even the lads who had been so furious
against him had now utterly forgotten him in this prospect of shelter
and help for Gerald. His condition frightened his mates. Neither knew
much about illness and nothing of Gerry's really frail constitution,
nor that it had been mostly on his account the Water Lily had been
built.

"My name's Cornwallis Stillwell. Corny I'm called. That was my brother
Wicky--Wickliffe, I mean--that tugged you up the Branch. He--he's as
smart as I ain't. Ha, ha! But what's the odds? He likes workin', I
like loafin' an' 'invitin' my soul', as the poets say. All be the
same, a hundred years from now. Won't make a mite of odds to the world
whether I hunt 'possums or he ploughs 'taters. I live on his farm an'
Lucetty runs it, along with the kids. Wicky calls it mine, 'cause it
was my share of father's property. But it ain't. It's only his good
brotherliness make him say it. We et it up ages ago. Bit at it by way
of mortgages, you know, till now there ain't a mouthful lef'. I mean,
they can't another cent be raised on it. It's Wicky's yet, but I'm
afraid i