"Don't neither. Wouldn't touch that Bab for a dollar; she scratches and bites like a mad cat," was Sam's sulky reply. "Glad of it; she can take care of herself. Betty can't, and if you touch one of her pig-tails I'll up and tell right out how I found you sniveling in the ma'sh like a great baby. So now!" and Ben emphasized his threat with a blow of the suspended rail which splashed the water over poor Sam, quenching his last spark of resistance. "Stop! I will!--I will!" "True as you live and breathe!" demanded Ben, sternly binding him by the most solemn oath he knew. "True as I live and breathe," echoed Sam, dolefully relinquishing his favorite pastime of pulling Betty's braids and asking if she was at home. "I'll come over there and crook fingers on the bargain," said Ben, settling the rail and running over it to the tuft, then bridging another pool and crossing again till he came to the stump. "I never thought of that way," said Sam, watching him with much inward chagrin at his own failure. "I should think you'd written 'Look before you leap,' in your copy-book often enough to get the idea into your stupid head. Come, crook," commanded Ben, leaning forward with extended little finger. Sam obediently performed the ceremony, and then Ben sat astride one of the horns of the stump while the muddy Crusoe went slowly across the rail from point to point till he landed safely on the shore, when he turned about and asked with an ungrateful jeer: "Now, what's going to become of you, old Look-before-you-leap?" "Mud-turtles can only sit on a stump and bawl till they are taken off, but frogs have legs worth something, and are not afraid of a little water," answered Ben, hopping away in an opposite direction, since the pools between him and Sam were too wide for even his lively legs. Sam waddled off to the brook above the marsh to rinse the mud from his nether man before facing his mother, and was just wringing himself out when Ben came up, breathless but good-natured, for he felt that he had made an excellent bargain for himself and friends. "Better wash your face; it's as speckled as a tiger-lily. Here's my handkerchief if yours is wet," he said, pulling out a dingy article which had evidently already done service as a towel. "Don't want it," muttered Sam, gruffly, as he poured the water out of his muddy shoes. "_I_ was taught to say 'Thanky' when folks got _me_ out of scrapes. But _you_ never had much bringing up, though you do 'live in a house with a gambrel roof,'" retorted Ben, sarcastically quoting Sam's frequent boast; then he walked off, much disgusted with the ingratitude of man.