"You knows it now," said the proprietor. "Over you go, or I'll 'elp yer." What! was it a case of being pitched overboard? We looked round desperately for hope, but there was none. We might by a concerted action have tackled one man, but the other on the bank, with the whip and the dog, was a formidable second line to carry. It needed all our philosophy to sustain us in the emergency. "Come, wake up," shouted the man. "'Ere, Tike, come!" Whereupon, to our terror, the dog leapt up on to the barge, and jumped yapping in our midst. "T'other side, if _you_ please," said the bargee, as I prepared dismally to take my header on the near side. "Wake 'im up, Tike!" I needed no waking up; and giving myself up for lost, bounded to the other side of the barge, and made a floundering jump overboard. Luckily for us the Low Heathens could swim to a man, and if all that we were in for was to swim round that hideous barge and get ashore, we should have been easily out of it. But we had yet to reckon with the man and the whip, who in his turn made every preparation to reckon with us. I was the first to taste his mettle. He had me twice before I could get clear, and I seem to feel it as I write. One by one the luckless and dripping Philosophers ran the gauntlet of that fatal debarkation, which was by no means alleviated by the opprobrious hilarity of our two castigators and the delighted yappings of Tike. At last it was all over, and, dripping and smarting, we collected our shattered forces a quarter of a mile down the towing-path, and hastily agreed that as a meeting-place for Philosophers a barge was not a desirable place. It was further agreed, that if we could catch the day boys who were the source of all our woes (for if our barge had not been let adrift, we could have sheered off in time), we would do to them as we had been done by. By good or ill luck, we had scarcely arrived at this important decision when a defiant shout from a little hill among the trees close by apprised us that we were not the only occupants of the river bank; and worse still, that whoever the strangers were, they must have been witnesses of our recent misfortunes--a certainty which made us feel anything but friendly. "Who are they?" said Langrish. "Suppose it's those Urbans," said Coxhead. "I heard they were going to excavate somewhere this way." "I vote we go and see," said Trimble, who was evidently smarting not a little. So we went and saw, and it was even as Coxhead had surmised; for as we approached, shouts of-- "Who got licked with a whip?" "What's the price of beauty?" "Why don't you dry your clothes?" fell on our ears. "Yah--we dare you to come down and have your noses pulled!" shouted we. "We dare you to come up and have your hair curled!" shouted they.