scarcely prepared for the sight which met her eyes. And then so rapidly
did things happen, that there seemed to be no time to be frightened.
For, at the first glimpse of her rescuer, foolish little Dorothy sprang
to her feet. As a matter of course the canoe overturned, throwing her
into the water.

Peggy's instinctive leap took no account of the depth of the stream. She
could have drowned with Dorothy. It was quite impossible for her to
stand by and look on while Dorothy drowned. Luckily the water, though
deep at this point, was not over her head. She floundered to her feet
choking and blowing, and clutched desperately at a small, damp object
the current was sweeping past her. Instantly two arms went about her
neck in a frantic embrace.

"Dorothy, don't hold so tight. I can't breathe."

The appeal was useless. Dorothy was beyond heeding any admonition but
that of the blind instinct of self-preservation. Peggy would not have
believed that there was such strength in the slender little arms.
Gasping, and with reeling senses, she edged step by step nearer the
shore, groping with her disengaged hand for the sloping bit of beach
where she could deposit her burden. When at length her fingers came in
contact with the pebbly edge the bright summer world was a black mist
before her unseeing eyes.

Luckily the contact with mother earth suggested to Dorothy that here was
something more stable than the swaying support to which she had been
clinging so desperately. Her hold relaxed, and a minute later she was
scrambling up the slope into the grass and bushes, caring for nothing
except to get as far as possible from the terrible water. Peggy caught
her breath, waited an instant for brain and vision to clear, and then,
with the aid of the obliging willow, climbed dripping from the stream.
For a minute or two she gave herself up to the luxury of being
frightened. Shuddering and sick, she gazed over her shoulder at the
rippling water, while one monotonous thought repeated itself over and
over in her brain like a chant. "She might have been drowned. I might
have been drowned. We might both have been drowned." Peggy was conscious
of an overwhelming, panic-stricken longing for her mother.

Dorothy was sitting back in the bushes, crying with a lustiness which
suggested that no serious consequences were to be apprehended from her
plunge bath, beyond the possibility of taking cold. "I don't like
'sploring islands," she sobbed. "Let's go b