wn and apportion it all out to his creditors, and
then had to begin borrowing again.

He had hard work scraping together the wherewithal to pay Mr. Prosser;
but the boys made it up for him, and the girls would have helped--only
Dave Shepard had instilled it into Ferd's mind that it was not honorable
to borrow from a girl.

However, having cleaned his own pocket and strained his credit to the
snapping point, Ferdinand was over at the Forge with Tubby a couple of
days afterward and beheld something in a store window that he thought he
wanted.

"Oh, Tubby!" he cried. "Lend me half a dollar; will you? I must have
that."

Tubby looked at him out of heavy-lidded eyes, and croaked: "Snow again,
brother; I don't get your drift!"

When Ferd went from one to the other of his mates they all refused--if
not quite as slangily as the fat youth, Ferd found himself actually a
pauper, with all lines of credit shut to him. It made him serious.

"If all you fellows, and the old prof., should suddenly die on me up
here--what would I do?" gasped Ferd. "Why--I'd have to walk home!"

"Or swim," said Dave, heartlessly. "You'd pawn your canoe, I s'pose."

Speaking of swimming, that was an art in which several of the boys, as
well as Bessie Lavine and Mina Everett, needed practice. Beside the
early morning dip, both clubs often held swimming matches either at
Green Knoll Camp, or off the boys' camp on Gannet Island.

The boys built a good diving raft and anchored it in deep water after
much hard work. The good swimmers among the girls--especially Wyn and
Grace--liked to paddle over to the raft and dive from it.

Late in the afternoon the Go-Aheads had come to the raft in their canoes
dressed only in their bathing suits, and found that the boys had gone
off on some excursion, and that even Professor Skillings was not in
sight at Cave-in-the-Wood Camp.

"Oh, goody!" exclaimed Bess, with satisfaction. "Now we can have a good
time without those trifling boys bothering us. I'm going to learn to
dive properly, Wyn."

"Sure," returned her friend and captain, encouragingly. "Now's the
time," and she gave Bess a good deal of attention for some few minutes.

The other girls disported themselves in the deep water to their vast
enjoyment. Bessie learned a good bit about diving and finally sat upon
the edge of the float to rest.

Wyn dived overboard.

She had taken a long slant out from the float, but once under the
surface she turned and