"Crack," he said, suddenly, raising himself on his elbow.

There was neither speech nor language. Crack's tail, that courteous member, made no sign.

"He was under the boat," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at the exhausted face of the man he had saved, and unable for the life of him to help a momentary fellow-feeling about the little dog.

Hugh remembered. It all came back, the boat, Crack's dying gasps, the agonized struggle, the strait gate of death, the difficult passage through it, the calm beyond. He had almost got through, and had been dragged back.

"Why did you interfere?" he said, in sudden passion, his eyes flaming in his white face.

A dull color rose to Lord Newhaven's cheek.

"I thought it was an accident," he said. "If it was not, I beg your pardon."

There was a moment's silence.

"It was an accident," said Hugh, hoarsely, and he turned on his elbow and looked fixedly at the water, so that his companion might not see the working of his face.

Lord Newhaven walked slowly away in the direction of Doll, whose distant figure, followed by another, was hurrying towards them.

"And so there is a Rachel as well, is there?" he said to himself, vainly trying to steel himself against his adversary.

"How is he now?" said Doll, coming within ear-shot.

"He's all right; but you'd better get him into dry clothes, and yourself, too."

"Change on the bank," said Doll, seizing a bundle from the keeper. "It's as hot as an oven in the sun. Why, Scarlett's sitting up! I thought when we laid into him on the bank that he was too far gone, didn't you? I suppose"—hesitating—"Crack?"

Lord Newhaven shook his head.

"I must go back to my boys now," he said, "or they will be getting into mischief."

Doll nodded. He and Lord Newhaven had had a hard fight to get the leaking boat to land with Hugh at the bottom of it. It had filled ominously when Doll ceased baling to help to drag in the heavy, unconscious body.

There had been a moment when, inapprehensive as he was, Doll had remembered, with a qualm, that Lord Newhaven could not swim.

"Every fellow ought to swim," was the moral he drew from the incident and repeated to his wife, who, struck by the soundness of the remark, repeated it to the Gresleys.

Lord Newhaven retraced his steps slowly along the bank in his water-logged boots. He was tired, and he did not hurry, for he could see in the distance two small figures sitting faithfully on a log where he had left them.

"Good little chaps," he said, half aloud.

In spite of himself his thoughts went back to Hugh. His feelings towards him had not changed, but they had been forced during the last half-hour out of their original intrenchments into the open, and were liable to attack from new directions.

It was not that he had virtually saved Hugh's life, for Doll would never have got him into the leaking boat and kept it afloat single-handed. That first moment of enthusiasm, when he had rubbed the senseless limbs and breathed into the cold lips, and had felt his heart leap when life came halting back into them, that moment had passed and left him cold.