No one but Piggy ever knew how Mealy Jones learned to swim; and Harold’s mother doesn’t consider Piggy Pennington any one, for the Penningtons are Methodists and the Joneses are Baptists, and Very hard-shelled ones, too.  However, Mealy Jones did learn to swim “dog-fashion” years and years after the others had become post-graduates in aquatic lore and could “tread water,” “swim sailor-fashion,” and “lay” their hair.  Mrs. Jones permitted her son to go swimming occasionally, but she always exacted from him a solemn promise not to go into the deep water.  And Harold, who was a good little boy, made it a point not to “let down” when he was beyond the “step-off.”  So of course he could not know how deep it was; although the bad little boys who “brought up bottom” had told him that it was twelve feet deep.

One hot June afternoon Mealy stood looking at a druggist’s display window, gazing idly at the pills, absently picking out the various kinds which he had taken.  He had just come from his mother with the expressed injunction not to go near the river.  His eyes roamed listlessly from the pills to the pain-killer, and; turning wearily away, he saw Piggy and Old Abe and Jimmy Sears.  The three boys were scuffling for, the possession of a piece of rope.  Pausing a moment in front of the grocery store, they beckoned for Mealy.  The lad joined the group.  Some one said,—­

“Come on, Mealy, and go swimmin’.”

“Aw, Mealy can’t go,” put in Jimmy; “his ma won’t let him.”

“Yes, I kin, too, if I want to,” replied Mealy, stoutly—­but, alas! guiltily.

“Then come on,” said Piggy Pennington.  “You don’t dast.  My ma don’t care how often I go in—­only in dog days.”

[Illustration:  The three boys were scuffling for the possession of a piece of rope.]

After some desultory debate they started—­the four boys—­pushing one another off the sidewalk, “rooster-fighting,” shouting, laughing, racing through the streets.  Mealy Jones longed to have the other boys observe his savage behavior.  He knew, however, that he was not of them, that he was a sad make-believe.  The guilt of the deed he was doing, oppressed him.  He wondered how he could go into crime so stolidly.  Inwardly he quaked as he recalled the stories he had read of boys who had drowned while disobeying their parents.  His uneasiness was increased by the ever-present sense that he could not cope with the other boys at their sports.  He let them jostle him, and often would run, after his self-respect would goad him to jostle back.  Mealy was glad when the group came to the deep shade of the woods and walked slowly.

It was three o’clock when the boys reached the swimming-hole.  There the great elm-tree, with its ladder of exposed roots, stretched over the water.  Piggy Pennington, stripped to the skin, ran whooping down the sloping bank, splashed over the gravel at the water’s edge, and plunged into the deepest water.  Old Abe followed cautiously, bathing his temples and his wrists before sousing all over.  Jimmy Sears threw his shirt high up on the bank as he stood ankle-deep in the stream.  Piggy’s exhilaration having worn off by this time, he picked up a mussel-shell and threw it at Jimmy’s feet.  The water dashed wide of its mark and sprinkled Mealy, who was sitting on a log, taking off his shoes.