can't drownd a Wiley, not without you tie nail-kags 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 hed n'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.




VI