“Very well; good-night!” and Ben walked off with his hands in his pockets as coolly as if the bog was Sam’s favorite retreat.

“Hold on, don’t be in such a hurry!” shouted Sam, seeing little hope of rescue if he let this chance go.

“All right!” and back came Ben ready for further negotiations.

“I’ll promise not to plague you if you’ll promise not to tell on me.  Is that what you want?”

“Now I come to think of it, there is one thing more.  I like to make a good bargain when I begin,” said Ben, with a shrewd air.  “You must promise to keep Mose quiet, too.  He follows your lead, and if you tell him to stop it he will.  If I was big enough I’d make you hold your tongues.  I aint, so we’ll try this way.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll see to Mose.  Now, bring on a rail, there’s a good fellow.  I’ve got a horrid cramp in my legs,” began Sam, thinking he had bought help dearly, yet admiring Ben’s cleverness in making the most of his chance.

Ben brought the rail, but just as he was about to lay it from the main-land to the nearest tussock, he stopped, saying, with the naughty twinkle in his black eyes again:  “One more little thing must be settled first, and then I’ll get you ashore.  Promise you wont plague the girls either, ’specially Bab and Betty.  You pull their hair, and they don’t like it.”

[Illustration:  THE BROOK ABOVE THE MARSH.]

“Don’t neither.  Wouldn’t touch that Bab for a dollar; she scratches and bites like a mad cat,” was Sam’s sulky reply.

“Glad of it; she can take care of herself.  Betty can’t, and if you touch one of her pig-tails I’ll up and tell right out how I found you sniveling in the ma’sh like a great baby.  So now!” and Ben emphasized his threat with a blow of the suspended rail which splashed the water over poor Sam, quenching his last spark of resistance.

“Stop!  I will!—­I will!”

“True as you live and breathe!” demanded Ben, sternly binding him by the most solemn oath he knew.

“True as I live and breathe,” echoed Sam, dolefully relinquishing his favorite pastime of pulling Betty’s braids and asking if she was at home.

“I’ll come over there and crook fingers on the bargain,” said Ben, settling the rail and running over it to the tuft, then bridging another pool and crossing again till he came to the stump.

“I never thought of that way,” said Sam, watching him with much inward chagrin at his own failure.

“I should think you’d written ‘Look before you leap,’ in your copy-book often enough to get the idea into your stupid head.  Come, crook,” commanded Ben, leaning forward with extended little finger.

Sam obediently performed the ceremony, and then Ben sat astride one of the horns of the stump while the muddy Crusoe went slowly across the rail from point to point till he landed safely on the shore, when he turned about and asked with an ungrateful jeer: