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 "Dicky and I were down here yesterday when you were su—" She was going to say sulking, I know, but she remembered manners ere too late, so Oswald bears her no malice. She went on: "Yesterday, when you were up-stairs. And we saw the water-tender open the lock and the weir sluices. It's quite easy, isn't it, Dicky?"

"As easy as kiss your hand," said Dicky; "and what's more, I know where he keeps the other thing he opens the sluices with. I votes we do."

"Do let's, if we can," Noël said, "and the bargees will bless the names of their unknown benefactors. They might make a song about us, and sing it on winter nights as they pass round the wassail bowl in front of the cabin fire."

Noël wanted to very much; but I don't think it was altogether for generousness, but because he wanted to see how the sluices opened. Yet perhaps I do but wrong the boy.

We sat and looked at the barge a bit longer, and then Oswald said, well, he didn't mind going back to the lock and having a look at the crowbars. You see Oswald did not propose this; he did not even care very much about it when Alice suggested it.

But when we got to Stoneham Lock, and Dicky dragged the two heavy crow-bars from among the elder bushes behind a fallen tree, and began to pound away at the sluice of the lock, Oswald felt it would not be manly to stand idly apart. So he took his turn.

It was very hard work, but we opened the lock