Now, although you might expect that the water being dammed back just here, it would be shallow below the dam, it was just the opposite. Had the bottom been hard, it would have been shallow; but as the bottom was soft and muddy, the rush of the water over the dam in the winter-floods had here made a great hollow. There was besides another weir a very little way below which again dammed the water back; so that the depth was greater here than in almost any other part within the ken of the village boys. Indeed there were horrors afloat concerning its depth. I was but a poor swimmer, for swimming is a natural gift, and is not equally distributed to all. I might have done better, however, but for those stories of the awful gulf beneath me. I was struggling and floundering, half-blind, and quite deaf, with a sense of the water constantly getting up and stopping me, whatever I wanted to do, when I felt myself laid hold of by the leg, dragged under water, and a moment after landed safe on the bank. Almost the same moment I heard a plunge, and getting up, staggering and bewildered, saw, as through the haze of a dream, a boy swimming after the boat, which had gone down with the slow current. I saw him overtake it, scramble into it in midstream, and handle the oars as to the manner born. When he had brought it back to the spot where I stood, I knew that Peter Mason was my deliverer. Quite recovered by this time from my slight attack of drowning, I got again into the boat, and leaving the oars to Peter, was rowed across and landed. There was no further difficulty. The man, alarmed, I suppose, at the danger I had run, recalled his dog; we bundled in the clothes; Peter rowed them across; Rory, the big boy, took the water after the boat, and I plunged in again above the dam. For the whole of that summer and part of the following winter, Peter was my hero, to the forgetting even of my friend Turkey. I took every opportunity of joining him in his games, partly from gratitude, partly from admiration, but more than either from the simple human attraction of the boy. It was some time before he led me into any real mischief, but it came at last. CHAPTER XVI I Go Down Hill It came in the following winter.