Presently the roaring of Bounding Brook arose above the noise of the tempest.

“We shall be over the bridge in a jiffy,” cried Jack, “and then, old fellow, what will you say?”

“I’d like to feel myself safely over,” muttered David, when, before the other could reply, Jack, David, horse, and meal went floundering into the raging waters of the swollen stream.  It was pitch dark; the storm was on them, and they were miles from human help.

The first few moments of horrible suspense can scarcely be expressed.  Jack at last found himself anchored on a log of drift-wood, the icy waters breaking over him, and the bridle still fast in his hand.

“David!” he shouted at the top of his voice, “David!”

“The Lord have mercy!” cried David, “I’m somewhere.”

[Illustration:  “In the raging waters of the swollen stream.”]

The meal? ah, that was making a pudding in some wild eddy of the Bounding Brook far below.

“No matter what a man believes, provided he’s sincere,” cried poor Jack, thoroughly drenched and humbled.  “It’s the biggest lie the devil ever got up.”

“It does matter. Being right is the main thing.  Sincerity doesn’t save a fellow from the tremendous consequences of being wrong.  It can’t get him out of trouble.  He’s obliged to endure it, no matter how sincere he had been.

“Didn’t I honestly believe I was on the right road, when I was like going to perdition all the time?”

The experience of that night completely and forever cured poor Jack of a common error which has brought many a poor soul into the wild surges of unbelief and irreligion.

SIX THINGS BEHIND

“Rufus,” said his mother, “did you mail the letter I gave you last evening?”

“Oh, mother, I forgot it!  I meant to, but just then I had to go and get some new shoe strings, so it went out of my mind.”

“Didn’t I speak of those strings yesterday?”

“Yes; but just then father called me to ask if I had weeded the pansy bed the night before.”

“And had you?”

“No, mother, I was just writing the letter you said must go to grandma—­”

“I thought you were to write that on Saturday.”

“I meant to, but I had to do some examples that I didn’t do on Friday, so I hadn’t time.”

“Rufus,” called his brother, “didn’t you nail the broken slat on the rabbit pen yesterday?”

“Oh!” Rufus sprang up in dismay.  “I was just going to, but I hadn’t watered the house plants, and I went to do that, and then—­”

“The rabbits are all out.”

Rufus hastened to join in the hunt for the pets.  In the course of his search he came upon two tennis rackets which he had “meant to” bring in the night before, and they were in bad condition.

“There now!  It will cost ever so much to get these strung up.  Why didn’t I take them in, anyway?  I remember I hadn’t locked the stable door when father called me, and then I hurried to do it before he asked me again.”