"I ain't carrvin' a souveneerr," Archer said with the familiar Catskill Mountain roll to his R's. "I just wanted to hear you say it," said Tom, limping over to him and for the first time in his life yielding to the weakness of showing sentiment. "All night long," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bunk, "I was thinkin' how you said it--and it sounds kind of good----" "How'd you make out in the riverr?" Archer asked. "You can't even say _river_," said Tom, laughing foolishly in his great relief. "It was some storrm, all right! But I got the matches safe anyway, and they'll strike, 'cause I tried one." "You ought to have made a whisk stick[A] to try it," said Tom, then caught himself up suddenly. "But I ain't going to tell you what you ought to do any more. I'm goin' to stop bossin'." [Footnote A: A stick the end of which is separated into fine shavings which readily catch the smallest flame, a familiar device used by scouts.] "I got yourr spy-glass forr you," said Archer. "I had to dive f'rr't. Didn't you hearr me call to you it was lost and I was goin' down f'rr't?" "----lost----down----" The tragic words flitted again through Tom's mind, and he reached out and took Archer's hand hesitatingly as if ashamed of the feeling it implied. "What'd you do that for? You were a fool," he said. "What you _got_ to do, you do," said Archer; "that's what you'rre always sayin'. Didn't you say you wanted it so's you could see that fellerr Blondel's house from the mountains? Therre it is," he said, nodding toward an old ring-net that stood near, "and it's some souveneerr too, 'cause it's been at the bottom of the old Rhine." Tom looked at the spy-glass which Archer had thrown into the net and the net seemed all hazy and tangled for his eyes were brimming. He would not spare himself now. "I see I'm the fool," he stammered; "I thought I shouldn't have started across because maybe you couldn't swim so good and didn't want to admit it." "Me? I dived in Black Lake before you werre borrn," said Archer. This was not quite true, since he was two years younger than Tom, but Tom only smiled at him through glistening eyes. "I see now I was crazy to think about finding her--anyway----" "You haven't forrgot how she treated us, have you?" Archer retorted, quoting Tom's own words. "It came to me all of a sudden, when I dropped the glove, and that's when I called to you. And all of a sudden I thought how you walked back toward the house with herr that night and--and--do you think I don't understand--you darrned big chump?" CHAPTER XXII BREAKFAST WITHOUT FOOD CARDS