John Gore laughed, for it was Mr. Pepys’s outing and not his, and he suffered his friend to follow his own nose, being amused to know what would be the end of it. They were following a grass track that curled hither and thither through thickets and over scrubby meadows, not a house to be seen anywhere, with the sun at noon, and no dinner threatening. The track proved kind to them, however, for the woods gave back suddenly, and they saw a red farm-house shelving its thatch under the shelter of a few beech-trees against the clear blue of an October sky. The beeches themselves were a-glitter with ruddy gold. And from the low brick chimney blew a wisp of smoke, as though flying a signal to Mr. Pepys’s inner man. The Secretary bumped his heels into his horse and went forward at a canter. John Gore saw him rein in clumsily as he skirted a hedge that closed the orchard and yard, rolling forward in the saddle as though he was in danger of going over his horse’s head. He waved an arm over the hedge toward a great pond that lay on the farther side thereof, between the farm-yard and the orchard. It seemed that the farmer’s child of seven had something of the Columbus in him, for while the men were in the fields and his mother in the kitchen he had rolled a big tub down from the yard, floated the craft, and embarked boldly, with a couple of thatching-pegs for oars. Whether the child paddled his way too daringly or no, the tub overturned in the middle of the pond, and, righting itself, lay there water-logged, while a flaxen head and a pair of frightened hands went bobbing and clawing and gulping amid ripples of scared water. And on the far bank, with the drake at their head, a company of white ducks were quacking in chorus, shaking their tails, and making a mighty pother. John Gore saw that the boy was likely to drown, and, vaulting out of the saddle, he broke through the hedge and reached the pond. The pool looked too dark and deep for wading, and probably had two feet of mud at the bottom; so, pulling off his horseman’s coat and his heavy riding-boots, he went in, made a breast plunge for it, and struck out for the child. The white head was going under again when John Gore snatched at the curls. He held the boy at arm’s-length, and, swimming till his feet touched mud, stood up and lifted the youngster in his arms. Mr. Pepys, who had run into the farm-house, appeared at the hedge with a round of rope and a big, raw-boned woman in a blue petticoat and a kind of linen smock. She pushed through, not sparing her brown forearms or her face, and would have taken the child out of John Gore’s arms. But he put her aside kindly, and, laying the boy on the grass under the hedge, unfastened his little doublet, and then held him up by the legs to empty the windpipe and lungs of water. “Have you a good fire burning?” “Lord bless you, sir, yes.” “Go and get your blankets ready. We shall soon have him alive and roaring.”