"We'll take the thame up at wunth, and have the affair arranged in a jiffy," Ted announced. "Hey, take care there, Landy, your ladder's slipping! Quick, grab hold of something, or you're a goner!" shouted Ty, suddenly. Landy tried to wriggle himself back again, but his stretch had been fatal to all chances for maintaining his position. The top of the long ladder lost its grip in the swaying crotch and slid from under him. There was a rattle of apples thudding down on the ground twenty feet below; but Landy had, on the spur of the moment, seized hold of the outer branches, so that there he hung, swinging back and forth; afraid to let go, and yet incapable of long maintaining his frantic grip. CHAPTER II. JASPER'S IDEA TAKES ROOT. "HOOP-LA, somebody grab me before I drop!" shouted Landy, as he kept trying to get a grip with his fat legs on the foliage of the outer branches which seemed to take particular delight in evading his ambitious designs. "Get a feather bed under him!" shrieked Ty, although at the same time he was changing his position in the tree with all possible haste, meaning to assist the clinging boy, if it could possibly be done. "Oh, save me first, and joke about it afterward!" cried Landy, who was really alarmed and under a tremendous strain, both bodily and mentally. "If I only had a rope with a loop in it, I could lasso him!" declared Jasper. "But you haven't, you see," cried Landy. "Think up something else! Hurry along, boys; I can't hold out much longer. I'm no Elmer as a gymnast. I'm slipping right now, I tell you. Wow! Is that measly old ladder under me, and will I come down with a splash on it?" He panted as he uttered this complaint, and the boys saw that his face resembled the setting sun, as he looked up to them almost piteously. But who could reach him there? On the very outer edge of the big tree, with the ground fully twenty feet below, and nothing to break his fall, it began to look like a serious business for poor Landy. Dr. Ted realized that there was real danger of the boy getting a broken leg if he fell that distance. Landy was not like agile Lil Artha, or some other members of the troop. His weight made him solid, and being without any spring, he would likely come down with a dull, sickening thud. "Hold on as long as you can, Landy!" yelled Ted, even neglecting to lisp in his great excitement. He was slipping down the tree like a "greased pig," as Jasper termed it, though what that sort of animal would be doing up in an apple tree he never took the trouble to explain. Ty saw what the idea was. He had been about to try and reach Landy by standing far out on a limb; but the prospect of success was very small. And so he followed Ted down the tree, slipping from limb to limb with the agility that some boys can only display when the owner of the orchard is seen coming on the full run with a ferocious bulldog at his heels.