CHAPTER XVIII.

TO THE RESCUE.

DICK CROZIER was on the Squire's mind as well as upon Hal's.

Upon the stroke of noon, he left his study and started up the hill. "He'll be in by half-past twelve, or thereabouts," he calculated; "and I'll have a talk with him."

Now it happened that Dick's master, having a train to catch for town on important business, Dick had got out of school rather earlier than usual. Just as he turned the corner by the Manor Farm, he spied the Squire plodding up the hill with his gold-headed cane.

Dick halted instantly, for it occurred to him that precisely the same thing he had warned Bill of was about to happen to himself.

"I'm in for a good lecture," said he, "and if my father don't 'give it me' when he hears, my name ain't Dick, that's all."

So, after due reflection, Dick concluded that it would be most prudent policy to give the Squire the slip.

"I shan't go in till dinner-time," said Dick. And going back across the road, he struck into the pathway for that still forbidden ground, the riverbank.

Meanwhile the Squire, totally unconscious of having been spied out, was seated in the sunny little parlour which Dick's mother loved so well, making acquaintance with his tenant's wife, and explaining the nature of his errand.

"He should be in by now, sir," said Dick's mother, looking at her watch,—her grandparents' present on her wedding day,—"but he gets late sometimes."

So the Squire proposed to wait awhile, if Mrs. Crozier would allow him to; and they talked, to pass away the time, Mrs. Crozier taking the Squire's heart by storm with her gentle manners, but looking uneasily at her watch from time to time.

Bill had been received back home with open arms, and without a word of scolding, on a promise—signed by the Squire, as it were—of future good behaviour. It happened that, being anxious to avoid a meeting with Dick Crozier, whose school stood within a stone's throw of the parish school which he attended, Bill had conceived the idea of returning by the riverbank. In arriving at this resolution, he had not forgotten the geese; but Bill was sharp enough to know that now the grass was laid down for hay, these terrors of humanity would no longer be abroad. He set off, accordingly, with the virtuous intention of running great part of the way, so as to reach home punctually. Dick had not proceeded far along the bank, therefore, when he perceived Bill coming full speed towards him.

Bill, too much out of breath to look higher than his toes, failed to perceive Dick until they were within a few yards of each other, when he suddenly awoke to the unpleasant fact that he was face to face with his enemy.

"Hullo, sneak!" exclaimed Dick.

"Let be!" cried Bill, as Dick attempted to bar his passage.

But Dick did not budge. He only dodged Bill, without attempting to make way.

"I'm in a hurry home," said Bill. "Let me by."

"Sneak!" repeated Dick. "Who split?"

"I didn't split," said Bill. "They made me tell."

"Made you tell?" sneered Dick. "When you had sixpence of me to hold your tongue! I'd have had mine cut out before I'd have been guilty of such a dirty trick."

"You'd 'a' had your'n cut out afore you'd 'a' been guilty of such a dirty trick as to suck an egg what you got another boy to steal for you!" retorted Bill, stammering and spluttering in his warmth. "It's 'receiving stolen goods.' The Squire said so; and you're to be had up for it."

Dick only answered by a mocking guffaw.

"Now, then," said Bill, "are you going to let me by?"

"Look out for old mother goose behind there," jeered Dick.

"Let me by!" reiterated Bill. "I'm in a hurry."

"Washerwoman!" jeered Dick. "Sixpence a pocketful."

Bill was getting exasperated. Moreover, he saw only one way out of it. "Now, then," threatened he suddenly, gathering up all his pluck, "do you mean to give in?"

Dick answered by striding across the bank, a foot each side and both arms akimbo, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. But Bill cut him short.

"You'd better look out then," shouted he, squaring up.

"All right," grinned Dick, accepting the challenge. "Look out for a ducking, pockets and all. It was a goosing last time."

This last fling was more than Bill could stand.

"Come on!" roared he, maddened beyond control. And rushing for Dick with both fists doubled, he went at him with all his might.

Dick was a pretty tough boy, and had done his share of fights at school; but Bill was tougher, and Dick soon found that he was in for such a mauling as he had never had in all his previous experience. For full five minutes, they tugged and tussled, and pounded and hammered at all available portions of each other's frames, until Dick began to wish that he had never provoked the combat. He was almost at the end of his strength, when a most unlooked-for accident delivered him out of Bill's hands.

Forgetting the narrowness of the footway in the heat of the fight, the boys had got crosswise, instead of lengthwise of it, when Dick, suddenly growing furious, to find that he was being worsted, drew off an instant, to gather up all his strength for a final onset; but, inadvertently stepping too far back, his heel struck over the treacherous grass of the shelving bank, and, with a slip and a yell, he went splashing backwards into the water.

Bill's first impulse was a shout of triumph; his second, that when a boy goes head over heels out of his depth, there is no telling how he will come up. Bill knew the look of a drowned dog, and had no wish to be taxed with making Dick look that way. Quick as thought, he turned to fly.

But though a scamp, Bill was not altogether bad. In the midst of all his fears, it struck him that people always rose to the surface before they drowned. If Dick rose, he might reach him. In an instant, he was back again. The exact spot was easy to find by the heel-mark on the bank and the brown swirl in the water, where the mud had been disturbed. Some distance out, too, beyond the ripples where the water had closed over Dick, was his cap, floating merrily down stream; but not a sign of Dick himself.

Bill went hot all over. Once having turned back, he seemed rooted to the spot by a strange fascination that forced him to watch for Dick's rising.

"It was his own fault," said he, mopping his forehead with one jacket cuff: "He should ha' let me by! I guess though, if he ain't comin' up, I'd better be off, afore I'm caught here! Golly!" exclaimed Bill, giving vent to his favourite expression, as a sudden thought flashed upon him. "Better rob a goose's nest and break her breast-bone than drownd a boy." And off he started at a run.

But as he ran away down the stream, following the cap, a dark brown object caught his eye. It was the drenched hair of Dick's head. The current there below the bend was very strong, and had washed him out into mid-stream, and was carrying him rapidly along towards the weir.

For a moment Bill scarcely knew whether to be glad or sorry; then the nobler instincts of his nature gained the upper hand, and he dashed along the bank, shouting—"Hold on! Keep it up till I catch hold of something to fish you out!"

At the same instant, there was an outcry from among the willow-trees. A dog sprang forward with a bark, and a dear treble voice rang out excitedly—"Why! It's some one's head! In, Blazer; in! Fetch him out! Oh! Quick! Quick!"

It was Maggie Rust, who had gone out with Hal to look for the dog, and found him on the riverbank, worrying at a knuckle bone dropped there by a careless butcher boy on his way to the Vicarage.

A bare moment sufficed Blazer to reach the bank, and in he splashed, paddling bravely across the current, with his fierce eyes starting, and his hard breaths frothing the surface of the water as he swam.

Maggie cheered him on. "Quick, Blazer; quick! Oh, he's floating down so fast!" she cried towards Hal, who had been slower getting to his feet to gain the spot. "He'll never reach in time."

But Blazer was also going with the stream as well as crossing it. In a few minutes more, the brave animal was up with Dick, and had his teeth firmly fastened in his jacket. And now came the tug of war. Maggie watched breathlessly, with beating heart and tightly clasped hands, whilst Hal, his face white and his lips parted, hung by her on his crutches. But Blazer was strong, and the water buoyed his burden up. The stream, too, helped in one way, whilst it hindered in another; for it lengthened every stroke, and carried him forward as he tried to cross back to the shore.

"Hurrah!" shouted Hal, at length unable any longer to keep his excitement in. "Hurrah! He'll do it! He'll do it! Hurrah!"

And Maggie's hands unclasped to clap as she took up the cry—"Hurrah!"

On first recognising "the young Squire," Bill had come to a sudden halt, and watched from a safe distance, half a mind to turn back; then he had come slowly on. Now he, too, took up the cheer with his whole might, and shouted—"Hooray!—Hooray!" as he ran excitedly forward.

A minute more, Dick was at the bank, and Maggie had sprung forward to help him out, whilst Blazer ran round about them in great glee, claiming praise for his heroic rescue, and splashing everybody with the water of his coat. Bill hung back an instant; then he, too, sprang to Maggie's side, and seizing Dick by the other arm, soon had him up on to the bank.

A wretched-looking object was Dick as he sat up and gazed round about him. His wet clothes clung tightly to his benumbed limbs; his teeth chattered with cold and fright; water dripped from his hair; and his face and knuckles were a mass of cuts and bruises, from their recent acquaintance with Bill's fists.

"You had better get home as fast as you can," advised Hal.

But Dick had caught sight of Bill, whom in his anxiety to get safely on terra firma he had not recognised.

"I'll give him a taste of it first," he muttered between his teeth.

"Better go home and get some gruel," was Bill's contemptuous rejoinder. "Golly how your teeth clack!"

This taunt put the last limit to endurance. The blood rushed to Dick's face, and his fists clenched; then to his feet, he flew at Bill.

But before he could get at him, Hal had guessed how matters stood, and raised one crutch between them; and the two antagonists stood glowering at each other across this forbidding barrier.

Bill burst out laughing; but Hal quickly put his crutch to the ground and swung himself between them. "Look here," said he, "nobody ever thinks of fighting before a girl; besides, when a fellow has just escaped from drowning, he ought to have something else to think of; and so ought you," he added, turning round on Bill.

"He might ha' been in t' other world by now," jeered Bill, with an attempt at drollery.

But Hal turned round on him with dignified reproof. "A boy who has just seen a life saved ought to know better than to mock," said he. "It's a shame," he added, looking from one to another with a pained expression, "when boys who have both done wrong want to tear each other to pieces for it. They ought to be too much ashamed. So get home both of you, and let us have no more such unchristian behaviour."

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At this point in the young Squire's discourse, Blazer, probably considering that he had not received due notice for his deed of valour, began to growl and whine. The consciences of both boys being somewhat overloaded, however, they interpreted his remarks as referring to themselves; and not desiring to provoke him further, they dropped their hostile attitude.

Bill was the first to make a move.

"You ought to shake hands," said Hal, as he turned to slink off.

But Bill's magnanimity was not capable of rising to this degree; and he felt as if he was being quite as generous as any one could reasonably expect in allowing poor dripping Dick to slip through his fingers in this easy way.

Hal stood gazing after Dick's retreating figure, as he ran off home at the top of his speed. "It's a pity that boys don't care more about being like Jesus Christ," observed he. "Of course, it's a sort of thing that takes a lot of trying, and boys naturally don't like trouble. They like play a good deal better. But then they ought to consider that they won't have to play when they're men; and what sort of men will they make, if they don't choose a good copy? As to it's being hard to imitate such a grand example as Jesus Christ—well! It isn't as if you'd got it all to do by yourself. There's the Holy Spirit, you know, who is promised in the Bible to all those who want to get along well."

Having delivered himself of these originally expressed sentiments, Hal also set forward; Maggie, with a thoughtful expression on her brow, walking by his side, and Blazer trotting on in front.

"Girls don't care about it either," said she presently.

"And that," added Hal, "is why there are so many bad men and women in the world. I should like it, when I'm Squire, if all the people on my estate were Christians—real ones, you know; not shams. You'd see the difference! It would entirely do away with policemen and gaols, and all that sort of thing."

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