"Cross my heart I can't. Honest, Bobbie," protested Van. "I've got into a quicksand or a quagmire or something. Look at me. I'm up to my knees now, and if you don't hurry you'll see nothing of me but my collar. I saved your life yesterday; you might do the same for me to-day." But Bob was too convulsed with amusement to offer aid; instead he stood on a large rock at the roadside and laughed immoderately. "Pull! Pull!" he cried to Van. "Why don't you pull?" "I am pulling," Van answered. "But it does no good. I can't budge my feet. I never saw such mud in all my life. It must be yards deep. It sucks my boots right off. You'll have to help me." "Not I! I know too well what would happen. It would be like Kipling's story of the Elephant's Child. Don't you remember, when the crocodile let go the nose of the little elephant how he suddenly sat down _plop_. I've no notion of being pulled into this mud hole when your rubber boots come to the surface. You'll have to get yourself out." "You old heathen! It is not a straight game to fit me out with a pair of hip rubber boots miles too large for me and then sit and howl when you see me losing my life in them. Well, you needn't come into the mire if you don't want to, but you can at least be gentleman enough to pass me the end of that pole that is lying beside you," said Van. "I'll do that." Bob picked up a long branch from the ground. "Here!" he cried. "Catch hold of this and pull." The two boys tugged at opposite ends of the stick. Then suddenly and quite without warning something happened. The dead wood parted and Bob hurtled backward off the rock where he had been standing and landed in a snow-drift; while Van, much to his astonishment, sat down with abruptness in the wettest of the mud. Two more chagrined boys could nowhere have been found. Bob was the first to get to his feet. Shaking the snow out of his hair and collar he called: "Get up, you--unless you want to be swallowed up for life. My eye, but you're a sight! If your mother could only see you now. Well, your feet are out, if you did have to get in all over to do it. Now step lively if you don't want to get stuck again. You are a peach, I must say!" Van took the banter good-naturedly. "That's what one might call being buried alive," he answered. "Lucky it wasn't you! I'm tall and could keep my head out; but the mire would long since have closed over an abbreviated person like yourself and you would have been seen no more." Bob winced. He was sensitive about his height. Clambering up on the rock beside his chum Van scooped up a handful of clean snow and with it washed his hands and face. "There!" he said at length. "I'm just as tidy as if it had not happened." "I can't exactly agree with you," replied Bob, "but I guess you'll have to do. Come on now. Goodness only knows where David and the sledge have got to by this time." They hurried up the hill. "There's David!" Van said, as they reached the crest of the rise.