Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/190

 "It's—It's my Lionel Clarence, flinging himself in!"

The lad's father went pale, as he broke into a run, and pantingly called back to old Doctor Ridley, puffing at his heels, the startling news that his son could not swim a stroke. Yet a moment later they saw the newly shorn head emerge from the water, saw the confident stroke and the business-like splutter from the lips. They both stopped speechless on the brink of the swimming-hole, scarcely able to believe their eyes, still too consumed with conflicting emotions to speak.

Lonely, who had caught sight of the advancing army from a distance, had taken a discreet long dive downstream, then another and another; and coming up under a canopy of wild grapevines, had scrambled ashore and secreted himself in the uppermost boughs of a leafy willow.

There he remained, squinting out at the sudden hub-bub, wondering if they would find the clothes he had cached in a hollow log, to escape the danger of "chawing beef" at the hands of the Upper River gang and the men from the Tile Works, who had the habit of not