ll water below the rapids, and he knew
that although he was pretty well bruised, none of his bones was broken.
He let go of the limb of the tree that had served him so well, and
flirting the water from his eyes, struck out with his old time vigor for
the shore, toward which he had started in the canoe.

When Terry Clark saw his friend go spinning into the whirlpool, he
scrambled back from the trunk of the tree, on which he had found refuge,
and ran at full speed down the bank. Fast as he went, he was just in
time to see Fred swimming through the foaming waters toward the land.

"Give me yer hand!" called out the delighted youngster; "there isn't
any body in the wide wurruld that could bate that onless it is mesilf,
and I couldn't do it."

"Whew!" exclaimed Fred, as he laboriously clambered up the steep bank;
"that was the biggest lot of swimming and diving crowded into the space
of a minute or two that I ever knew; I wouldn't like to take such a trip
each day."

"And I'm thinkin' that it'll be a few days after this whin we try it
agin," added Terry, delighted to see his loved comrade before him
unharmed; "I jist give up when I seen you plunge in among the rocks, and
was wonderin' how your father and mother and sister Edith would faal
when I should be luggin' your dead body home."

"I'm thankful that you haven't _that_ to do," said Fred with an
earnestness that could not be mistaken; "but come, the clothes of us
both are dripping, and we can't get away any too soon."

It was not far to walk, and a few minutes later they reached the other
side of the clearing, where the cluster of cabins stood. The first
living object on which their eyes rested was Brindle, lying on the
ground and chewing her cud with an air of contentment which belongs
exclusively to her kind, or rather kine.

The boys laughed and Terry said:

"If she had such a thing as conscience she wouldn't be takin' things in
that aisy style, after givin' us a duckin' that come nigh bein' our last
one."

"You are right, Terry, but what did you do with that bell that Deerfoot
took away from the Winnebago?"

"I lift it wid my gun on the other side of the creek; I didn't want it
tollin' our funeral knell all the time we was goin' through the rapids
and splittin' the rocks to pieces by bangin' our heads agin them."

"It is just as well, for the creek will be so low that there will be no
danger in crossing it to-morrow, and you can get the bell again; well,