hull fool family! If I hedn't 'a' be'n so old, I'd 'a' jumped
in myself, for you can't drownd a Wiley, not without you tie
nail-kegs to their head an' feet an' drop 'em in the falls."

Alcestis, who had neither brains, courage, nor experience, had,
better still, the luck that follows the witless. He was carried
swiftly down the current; but, only fifty feet away, a long,
slender, log, wedged between two low rocks on the shore, jutted
out over the water, almost touching its surface. The boy's
clothes were admirably adapted to the situation, being full of
enormous rents. In some way the end of the log caught in the
rags of Alcestis's coat and held him just seconds enough to
enable Stephen to swim to him, to seize him by the nape of the
neck, to lift him on the log, and thence to the shore. It was a
particularly bad place for a landing, and there was nothing to do
but to lower ropes and drag the drenched men to the high ground
above.

Alcestis came to his senses in ten or fifteen minutes, and seemed
as bright as usual: with a kind of added swagger at being the
central figure in a dramatic situation.

"I wonder you hedn't stove your brains out, when you landed so
turrible suddent on that rock at the foot of the bank," said Mr.
Wiley to him. "I should, but I took good care to light on my
head," responded Alcestis; a cryptic remark which so puzzled Old
Kennebec that he mused over it for some hours.