"It's he! He's safe, he's safe, Phillips!" cried the superintendent, dancing about excitedly. "Look out, Keating! What's the matter with you? You'll have us both in the river, the first thing you know." The two gray-haired men shook hands, patted each other on the shoulder and laughed like schoolboys in the excess of their joy. "Can you swim?" called the superintendent. "Yes, I'll meet you on the other side," was the reply faintly borne to their ears. "Come on, Phillips." Mr. Keating started on a run for the other side of the river, for which Rush was swimming steadily. The banks were high and steep on the far side, but there was an excellent beach, so that the Iron Boy had no difficulty in making a landing. He was obliged, however, to go around for some distance before finding a place to climb to the top. Arriving finally, Steve found the superintendent and chief engineer pacing up and down the bank waiting for him. They grasped the lad's hands, each seeking to outdo the other in expressing their appreciation of what he had done. "But what is troubling us is to understand how you were carried down by that pig and yet not killed?" questioned Mr. Keating. "The pig did not carry me down." "It didn't?" "Certainly not. This is the only place the pig touched me." Steve exhibited a rent in his lower trousers' leg on the right side, and parting this showed them a burn right down the leg. The burn looked an inch deep. "Man alive, you must get to the hospital as quickly as you can!" commanded the superintendent. Illustration: "Look!" Shouted Mr. Phillips. "Yes, I should think I were about finished if I had such a burn as that. The pig raked you there, didn't it?" asked Mr. Phillips. "Yes, sir. But it doesn't matter much. It smarts a little, that is all. It isn't the first time I have been burned. Shall we go on to the furnaces?" "We certainly shall not," emphasized Mr. Keating. "You are going to the hospital and have that wound dressed before you get it ground full of dirt and contract blood-poisoning. We will stop in here at Mr. McNaughton's office." Steve did not want them to give so much attention to him. He was anxious to get to the furnaces and talk over his plan with the chief engineer and the superintendent. Instead, the superintendent was at that moment telephoning to the company's hospital, ordering a surgeon to come to the division superintendent's office to dress a burn. The three sat down to talk while awaiting the surgeon. Of course Steve steered the conversation around to the plan he had proposed. Mr. Keating watched the boy's face narrowly. He could not understand how Rush could sit there so calmly and indifferently with a wound such as he had, but the only indication that the Iron Boy felt the slightest discomfort was a twitching of his face, now and then, as sharp pains shot through the wound.