"I'm horribly thirsty, Monty. That water in the mine had copper or something in it, and I couldn't drink it. You didn't know that, did you?--when you put me in there, I mean? Won't you stop the car and let me go stick my face in that river?" The car was brought to a stand and Jibbey got out to scramble down the river bank in the starlight. Obeying some inner prompting which he did not stop to analyze, Smith left his seat behind the wheel and walked over to the edge of the embankment where Jibbey had descended. The path to the river's margin was down the steep slope of a rock fill made in widening the highway to keep it clear of the railroad track. With the glare of the roadster's acetylenes turned the other way, Smith could see Jibbey at the foot of the slope lowering himself face downward on his propped arms to reach the water. Then, for a single instant, the murderous underman rose up and laughed. For in that instant, Jibbey, careless in his thirst, lost his balance and went headlong into the torrent. A battling eon had passed before Smith, battered, beaten, and half-strangled, succeeded in landing the unconscious thirst-quencher on a shelving bank three hundred yards below the stopped automobile. After that there was another eon in which he completely forgot his own bruisings while he worked desperately over the drowned man, raising and lowering the limp arms while he strove to recall more of the resuscitative directions given in the Lawrenceville Athletic Club's first-aid drills. In good time, after an interval so long that it seemed endless to the despairing first-aider, the breath came back into the reluctant lungs. Jibbey coughed, choked, gasped, and sat up. His teeth were chattering, and he was chilled to the bone by the sudden plunge into the cold snow water, but he was unmistakably alive. "What--what happened to me, Monty?" he shuddered. "Did I lose my grip and tumble in?" "You did, for a fact." "And you went in after me?" "Of course." "No, by Gad! It wasn't 'of course'--not by a long shot! All you had to do was to let me go, and the score--your score--would have been wiped out for good and all. Why didn't you do it?" "Because I should have lost my bet." "Your bet?" "Well, yes. It wasn't exactly a bet; but I promised somebody that I would bring you back to Brewster to-night, alive and well, and able to send a telegram. And if I had let you drown yourself, I should have lost out." "You promised somebody?--not Verda?" "No; somebody else." Jibbey tried to get upon his feet, couldn't quite compass it, and sat down again. "I don't believe a word of it," he mumbled, loose-lipped. "You did it because you're not so danged tough and hard-hearted as you thought you were." And then: "Give me a lift, Monty, and get me to the auto. I guess--I'm about--all in."