“I don’t think I will go any farther,” she said; “Nick will be along pretty soon, and I’ll wait here for him.”

Standing on the bridge and looking down the road and listening for the sound of the carriage wheels were tiresome to one of Nellie’s active habits, and it was not long before she broke off some of the bread, set down her lunch basket, and then dropped some crumbs into the water.

As they struck the surface, sending out little rings toward the shore, several tiny fish came up after the food.  Nellie laughed outright, and, in her eagerness, was careless of how she threw the crumbs, most of which fell upon the bank.

It occurred to her that she could do better by going down to the edge of the stream, where she would not mistake her aim.

Childlike, she did not pause to think of the wrong of so doing, for she ought to have known that her parents never would have consented to such an act.

Just there, Nellie, like many another little girl, made a great mistake.

CHAPTER X.

IN GREAT DANGER.

A little child is like a butterfly, thinking only of the pleasures of the moment.  Nellie Ribsam came down close to the edge of the creek and threw some crumbs out upon the surface.  In the clear water she could see the shadowy figures of the minnows, as they glided upward and snapped at the morsels.

She became so interested in the sport that she kept walking down the bank of the stream, flinging out the crumbs until there was none left in her hand; then she debated whether she should go back after her lunch basket or wait where she was until Nick appeared on the bridge.

“It’s a bother to carry the basket with me,” she said to herself; “I had to leave it on the ground when I was after grapes, so I’ll wait till Nick comes, and then I’ll call to him.  Won’t he be scared when he sees me down here!”

From where she stood, she observed the bridge above her head, and consequently Nick could look directly down upon her whenever he should reach the structure.

Nellie felt that she would like to go on down the creek to the big pond into which it emptied; but she knew better than to do that, for she would be certain to miss her big brother, and it was already beginning to grow dark around her.

“I wonder what makes Nick so long,” she said to herself, as she sat down on a fallen tree; “I’m so tired that I never can walk the four miles home.”

She had sat thus only a brief while, when her head began to droop; her bright eyes grew dull, then closed, and leaning against a limb which put out from the fallen tree, on which she was sitting, she sank into the sweet, dreamless sleep of childhood and health.

Had she not been disturbed she would not have wakened until the sun rose, but at the end of an hour, an involuntary movement of the head caused it to slip off the limb against which it was resting with such a shock that instantly she was as wide awake as though it was mid-day.