He was sauntering with would-be indifference towards the foot-bridge that shortened the walk to the Church, but he was still more than one hundred yards from it, when on the opposite side he beheld Sydney herself.  She was on the very verge of the stream, below the steep, slippery clay bank, clinging hard with one hand to the bared root of a willow stump, and with the other striving to uphold the head and shoulder of a child, the rest of whose person was in the water.

One cry, one shout passed, then John had torn off coat, boots, and waistcoat, and plunged in to swim across, perceiving to his horror that not only was there imminent danger of the boy’s weight overpowering her, but that the bank, undermined by recent floods, was crumbling under her feet, and the willow-stump fast yielding to the strain on its roots.  And while each moment was life or death to her, he found the current unexpectedly strong, and he had to use his utmost efforts to avoid being carried down far below where she stood watching with cramped, strained failing limbs, and eyes of appealing, agonising hope.

One shout of encouragement as he was carried past her, but stemming the current all the time, and at last he paddled back towards her, and came close enough to lay hold of the boy.

“Let go,” he said, “I have him.”

But just as Sydney relaxed her hold on the boy the willow stump gave way and toppled over with an avalanche of clay and stones.  Happily Sydney had already unfastened her grasp, and so fell, or threw herself backwards on the bank, scratched, battered, bruised, and feeling half buried for an instant, but struggling up immediately, and shrieking with horror as she missed John and the boy, who had both been swept in by the tree.  The next moment she heard a call, and scrambling up the bank, saw John among the reedy pools a little way down, dragging the boy after him.

She dashed and splashed to the spot and helped to drag the child to a drier place, where they all three sank on the grass, the boy, a sturdy fellow of seven years old, lying unconscious, and the other two sitting not a little exhausted, Sydney scarcely less drenched than the child.  She was the first to gasp—-

“The boy?”

“He’ll soon be all right,” said John, bending over him.  “How came-—”

“I came suddenly on them-—him and his brother—-birds’-nesting.  In his fright he slipped in.  I just caught him, but the other ran away, and I could not pull him up.  Oh! if you had not come.”

John hid his face in his hands with a murmur of intense thanksgiving.

“You should get home,” he said.  “Can you?  I’ll see to the boy.”

At this moment the keeper came up full of wrath and consternation, as soon as he understood what had happened.  He was barely withheld from shaking the truant violently back to life, and averred that he would teach him to come birds’-nesting in the park on Sunday.