Jim. He had saved her life, or
she believed so, in her childhood that now seemed far away. But for Jim,
the poorhouse boy, she had never escaped from Mrs. Stott's truck-farm
when she had been kidnapped and hidden there. He had stood by her in all
her little troubles, had praised and scolded her, and known her through
and through. It was her talk about him which had made Mr. Ford invite
him to San Leon--to his death, maybe.

That thought was too much. Clinching her small hands and stamping her
little foot she defied even death to hurt poor Jim, good Jim, brainy
Jim, who was to astonish the world some day by his wisdom!

"Oh! If you'd only have told me before! I would have had him found long,
long ago! To think of that poor fellow wandering around alone, sick,
crazy, suffering--not knowing where he was or what he was doing! And we
strolling around, looking at old 'Barracks' and things, and telling
silly stories of silly picnics! It was cruel, cruel! Come, Alfy. You
like him, too. You don't look down on my poor boy--you come and help me
find him!"

She seized her old friend's hand and ran toward the house, which now
looked anything save beautiful in her sight; and, turning, she saw the
lake, gleaming in the noonday sun as it gleamed in the red rays of
sunset with Jim there to admire it.

"The lake! He's drowned! That's where he is, our Jim! In the bottom of
that horrible lake!"

Catching Alfaretta's hand more firmly she drew that frightened girl
along with her to the edge of the pond and to a little boat that was
moored there. Both lake and boat were merely toylike in proportion and
the bottom of the pond was pebble-strewn and plainly visible through the
clear, shallow water.

"He ain't--he--ain't--he can't--you could see--him--He isn't--Oh! Dolly,
Dolly Doodles! I'm sick! It makes me feel terrible queer!" wailed
Alfaretta. "But Jim can't--Jim can't be drowned! _He can't!_"

"Yes he can, too. Shut up. Help me untie that rope. Get in. Take an oar.
Row--row, I tell you," snapped Dorothy, distraught.

"I can't. I dassent! I never touched to row an oar in my life. Not in my
whole life long, and--I--I shan't do it now!" retorted the mountaineer
with equal crispness.

But she had no need to try. The whole party had followed Dorothy to the
water's edge and had divined her intent. Not one believed that Jim was
drowned, though they could have given no good reason for this disbelief.
Only that was too horrible. Such a th