er."

"Why, then, I should lose the fish."

"Not you. Ain't he hooked? You do as I say, and then git back, and you
can pull all out together."

Dexter bestrode the branch, and worked himself along further and further
till an ominous crack made him pause.

"Go on," shouted the boy from the other side.

"He'll think I'm a coward if I don't," said Dexter to himself, and he
worked himself along for another three feet, with the silvery fish just
before him, seeming to tempt him on.

"There, you can reach him now, can't you?" cried the boy.

"Yes; I think I can reach him now," said Dexter. "Wait till I get out
my knife."

It was not so easy to get out that knife, and to open it, as it would
have been on land. The position was awkward; the branch dipped at a
great slope now toward the water, and Dexter's trousers were not only
drawn half-way up his legs, but drawn so tightly by his attitude that he
could hardly get his hand into his pocket.

It was done though at last, the thin bough in which the line was tangled
seized by the left hand, while the right cut vigorously with the knife.

It would have been far easier to have disentangled the line, but Bob
Dimsted was a learned fisher, and he had laid down the law. So Dexter
cut and cut into the soft green wood till he got through the little
bough all but one thin piece of succulent bark, dancing up and down the
while over the deep water some fifteen feet from the bank.

_Soss_!

That last vigorous cut did it, and the bough, with its summer burden of
leaves, dropped with a splash into the water.

"There! What did I tell you!" cried Dexter's mentor. "Now you can get
back and pull all out together. Fish won't bite for a bit after this,
but they'll be all right soon."

Dexter shut up his knife, thrust it as well as he could into his pocket,
and prepared to return.

This was not so easy, for he had to go backwards. What was more, he had
to progress up hill. But, nothing daunted, he took tight hold with his
hands, bore down upon them, and was in the act of thrusting himself
along a few inches, when--_Crack_!

One loud, sharp, splintering crack, and the branch, which was rotten
three parts through, broke short off close to the trunk, and like an
echo to the crack came a tremendous--_Plash_!

That water, as already intimated, was deep, and, as a consequence, there
was a tremendous splash, and branch and its rider went down right out of
sight, twig after tw