“There,” said Pat, as he put away his saw, “I hope the first feller that puts his fut on that same’ll be a good swimmer. It’s twinty fate o’ wather he’ll drop in, not an inch the less.” But Pat’s scrutiny of the “surrounding country,” keen as it was, had not been as complete as he imagined. On the opposite shore of the deep and capacious mill-pond, where the bulrushes had grown so thickly up to the edge, and the willows had matted the sweeping boughs so very densely, every blackbird had left his perch some ten minutes earlier. The birds had been better posted than Pat Murphy, and knew very well why they had winged it away so suddenly and unanimously, but Pat had failed to take the hint. Little he was thinking of those chattering loafers, the blackbirds, but every one of them had his own beady little eye on the stealthy movements of Zeb Fuller. Not so very young or so small, either, was Zeb, only somewhat short and “stocky” in build, and the slight cast in one of his twinkling gray optics did not at all interfere with the perfection with which he squinted through the willows at what was going on at the spring-board. “Going to saw it off, is he?” muttered Zeb. “Well, Pat Murphy never’d ha’ done that unless the old man made him. No, he’s just a-sawin’ under it. If that ain’t mean! Well, no, not exactly mean, but if Pat reckons he’ll catch any of our crowd in that trap, he’s a sold Irishman, that’s all. Soon as he clears out, I’ll cut around and give the boys the word. There won’t one on ’em set foot on that there plank--you see if they do.” Zebedee Fuller was the last boy in the village to interfere with anything like a practical joke, and his warning to “the boys” did not go beyond his own particular set. Still, the way in which the mill and the pond were watched, that day, was a lesson for the detective service. The hour at which old Gersh Todderley started out in his antiquated buggy, and the hour of his return, as well as every “in and out” of Pat Murphy himself, were carefully noted by one youngster or another, nor did the discontented blackbirds have a fair show at their willow-tree perches during all those weary hours of patient waiting. At last, as the sun sank lower and lower in the west, the accustomed time arrived for such of the village boys as declined the long, hot walk to the lake, to trouble the smooth waters of the mill-pond and the unsympathizing soul of Gershom Todderley. Pat Murphy was somehow more than usually busy at the grist-mill; the saw of the sawmill had been quiet for weeks. There was really no reason why the boys should not have had a good time with their spring-board and the cool, cleansing, refreshing water--no reason at all but the dog-in-the-manger spirit of old Gersh Todderley. But the accustomed squad of young “dolphins” forbade to come, for some cause or other, and Pat Murphy came to the north window of the mill, for the hundredth time, all in vain.