id cramp in my legs," began Sam, thinking he had
bought help dearly, yet admiring Ben's cleverness in making the most of
his chance.

Ben brought the rail, but just as he was about to lay it from the
main-land to the nearest tussock, he stopped, saying, with the naughty
twinkle in his black eyes again: "One more little thing must be settled
first, and then I'll get you ashore. Promise you wont plague the girls
either, 'specially Bab and Betty. You pull their hair, and they don't
like it."

[Illustration: THE BROOK ABOVE THE MARSH.]

"Don't neither. Wouldn't touch that Bab for a dollar; she scratches and
bites like a mad cat," was Sam's sulky reply.

"Glad of it; she can take care of herself. Betty can't, and if you touch
one of her pig-tails I'll up and tell right out how I found you
sniveling in the ma'sh like a great baby. So now!" and Ben emphasized
his threat with a blow of the suspended rail which splashed the water
over poor Sam, quenching his last spark of resistance.

"Stop! I will!--I will!"

"True as you live and breathe!" demanded Ben, sternly binding him by the
most solemn oath he knew.

"True as I live and breathe," echoed Sam, dolefully relinquishing his
favorite pastime of pulling Betty's braids and asking if she was at
home.

"I'll come over there and crook fingers on the bargain," said Ben,
settling the rail and running over it to the tuft, then bridging another
pool and crossing again till he came to the stump.

"I never thought of that way," said Sam, watching him with much inward
chagrin at his own failure.

"I should think you'd written 'Look before you leap,' in your copy-book
often enough to get the idea into your stupid head. Come, crook,"
commanded Ben, leaning forward with extended little finger.

Sam obediently performed the ceremony, and then Ben sat astride one of
the horns of the stump while the muddy Crusoe went slowly across the
rail from point to point till he landed safely on the shore, when he
turned about and asked with an ungrateful jeer:

"Now, what's going to become of you, old Look-before-you-leap?"

"Mud-turtles can only sit on a stump and bawl till they are taken off,
but frogs have legs worth something, and are not afraid of a little
water," answered Ben, hopping away in an opposite direction, since the
pools between him and Sam were too wide for even his lively legs.

Sam waddled off to the brook above the marsh to rinse the mud from his
nether man before fac