They did not debate the question long, but throwing off their clothes, they soon plunged into the clear lake.  The water did not feel quite so warm to their bodies, as it tasted when they washed down their dinner with it.  Still, it was not very cold; and as the place was quite convenient for bathing, having a hard, gravelly bottom, with a gradual slope, they enjoyed their dip in the water as well as they could enjoy a forbidden gratification.

After they had dressed themselves, they sat a little while with their caps off, that the warm sun might dry their hair, and thus remove all evidence of their stolen pleasure.  This accomplished, they concluded, from the position of the sun, that it was time to start for home; and taking their basket and canes, they commenced their homeward march.  They met with no incident of any moment in returning, except that they got off their course at one time; but Jerry, who was quite at home in the woods, soon found where he was, and set himself right again.  The last two miles of their jaunt were the hardest of all, especially to Oscar, who was more troubled with sore feet and stiff legs than Jerry.  They were both, however, as tired and hungry as need be, when they got home.

No questions were asked about their going into water.  This was fortunate, for it probably saved them from the additional guilt of falsehood.  They experienced no punishment for their disobedience, except the consciousness that they had committed a wrong act.  To some boys, that alone would have been no slight punishment; but I fear this was not the case with Oscar and Jerry.

CHAPTER XVII.

CLINTON.

“Come, Jerry, let’s go over to Clinton’s this forenoon,” said Oscar, the morning after their excursion to the hermit’s hut.

“Agreed,” replied Jerry, “we ’ll start right away as soon as I can find my cap.  Let me see—–­where did I leave it, I wonder?”

“Jerry,” said Mrs. Preston, who overheard this conversation, “bring me in an armfull of wood before you go.”

“I ’ll get the wood while you ’re looking for your cap,” said Oscar, and he started for the wood-house.

Oscar almost repented of his offer when he discover ed that there was no wood split.  However, he took the axe and split a few logs, and carried them into the kitchen.  Jerry had not yet found his cap, though he had searched all over the house for it.  He began to suspect some one had played a trick upon him by hiding his cap, and when Emily laughed at his impatience, he concluded she was the guilty one.  In vain she protested that she had not seen the missing cap, and did not know where it was.  He searched every part of the girls’ chamber, and then, in his vexation, he pulled Emily’s bonnet from off her head, and tossed it out of the window into an apple-tree, in the branches of which it lodged.