“Dudley, look at me.”

Roy’s tone was peremptory, but Dudley never moved, until the command was given in a sharper tone.  Then he raised his head, but his blue eyes had a guilty harassed look in them, and he dropped them quickly again.

“It’s no good; I’ve found you out.  Did you tie up your feet like that yourself?”

After a minute, in a sepulchral tone, came the words, “Yes, when you weren’t looking!”

Roy lay back on his pillows with a sigh.

A little disappointment mingled with his feelings which were somewhat mixed.  After a pause, he said, “You are a good fellow!  To think of doing that for me!  What would you have done if I hadn’t jumped in to save you?”

Then Dudley raised his head: 

“I knew you wouldn’t fail me,” he said, triumphantly; “I knew I could trust you!”

Roy put out his thin little arm and drew Dudley’s bonny face down by the side of his on the pillow.

“I don’t think,” he whispered, “that even I could have been plucky enough to do that—­not in sight of that old mill wheel!”

Neither spoke for a few minutes; then Dudley said,

“I should have been your murderer if you had died.  That has been the worst of it.  But you did like saving a drowning fellow, didn’t you?”

“Ye-es, but it wasn’t quite real—­at least it isn’t as if you really had tumbled in by accident.”

“Well but I only did what you said we must do.  I made an opportunity.”

And after this remark Roy had nothing more to say; but neither he nor Dudley ever enlightened any one as to the true cause of the accident.

When Roy had quite recovered, the two boys set out one afternoon to visit their greatest friend in the village.  This was the old man every one called “old Principle.”  He lived by himself in a curious three-cornered house at the extreme end of the village, and kept a little general shop where everything but eatables could be obtained.

“I keep every article that man, woman, or child can want for their use, for their homes, their work or their play; but food and drink I will not cater for.  It’s against my principles to sell perishable goods, and I will not be the one to minister to the very lowest animal wants of my fellow creatures.”

This was his favorite speech, from which it may be judged he was somewhat of a character.

He had several hobbies, and was a well-read man and superior to those around him; and perhaps this was the cause of his holding himself aloof from most of the villagers.  They termed him “cranky and cracked,” but his goods were always acceptable, and he was thoroughly successful in his business.  When his shop was closed he would go out on the hills, and there spend his time studying geology and botany.  He knew the name of every plant and insect, and the strata of the earth for many miles round; and it was out of doors that the boys first made his acquaintance.