"Yah! you didn't know grandfather," cried the boy mockingly; "and you don't know how to fish. Grandfather wouldn't have taught you to chuck a fish up in the tree. You should strike gently, like that."

He gave the top of his rod a slight, quick twitch, and hooked a good-sized roach. Dexter grinning to see him play it till it was feeble enough to be drawn to the side and lifted out.

"That's the way grandfather taught me how to fish," continued the boy, as he took the hook from the captive's mouth, "I say, what's your name!"

"Dexter Grayson," was the answer, for the boy felt keenly already that the names Obed Coleby were ones of which he could not be proud.

"Ever been in the workus!"

"Yes."

"Ever see grandfather there!"

"Yes, I've seen him," said Dexter, who felt no inclination to enlighten the boy further.

"Ah, he could fish," said the boy, baiting and throwing in again. "My name's Dimsted--Bob Dimsted. So's father's. He can fish as well as grandfather. So can I," he added modestly; "there ain't a good place nowheres in the river as we don't know. I could take you where you could ketch fish every swim."

"Could you?" said Dexter, who seemed awed in the presence of so much knowledge.

"Course I could, any day."

"And will you?" said Dexter eagerly.

"Ah dunno," said the boy, striking and missing another fish. "You wouldn't care to go along o' me?"

"Yes, I should--fishing," cried Dexter. "But my line's fast."

"Why don't you climb up and get it then? Ain't afraid, are you!"

"What, to climb that tree?" cried Dexter. "Not I;" and laying the rod down with the b.u.t.t resting on the bank, he began to climb at once.

"Mind yer don't tumble in," cried Bob Dimsted; "some o' them boughs gets very rotten--like touchwood."

"All right," said Dexter; and he climbed steadily on in happy ignorance of the fact that the greeny lichen and growth was not good for dark cloth trousers and vests. But the bole of the tree was short, for it had been pollarded, and in a minute or two he was in a nest of branches, several of which protruded over the water, the one in particular which had entangled the fishing-line being not even horizontal, but dipping toward the surface.

"That's the way," shouted Bob Dimsted. "Look sharp, they're biting like fun."

"Think it'll bear?" said Dexter.

"Bear? Yes; half a dozen on yer. Sit on it striddling, and work yourself along till you can reach the line. Got a knife?"

"Yes."

"Then go right out, and when you git far enough cut off the little bough, and let it all drop into the water."

"Why, then, I should lose the fish."

"Not you. Ain't he hooked? You do as I say, and then git back, and you can pull all out together."

Dexter bestrode the branch, and worked himself along further and further till an ominous crack made him pause.

"Go on," shouted the boy from the other side.

"He'll think I'm a coward if I don't," said Dexter to himself, and he worked himself along for another three feet, with the silvery fish just before him, seeming to tempt him on.

"There, you can reach him now, can't you?" cried the boy.

"Yes; I think I can reach him now," said Dexter. "Wait till I get out my knife."

It was not so easy to get out that knife, and to open it, as it would have been on land. The position was awkward; the branch dipped at a great slope now toward the water, and Dexter's trousers were not only drawn half-way up his legs, but drawn so tightly by his att.i.tude that he could hardly get his hand into his pocket.

It was done though at last, the thin bough in which the line was tangled seized by the left hand, while the right cut vigorously with the knife.

It would have been far easier to have disentangled the line, but Bob Dimsted was a learned fisher, and he had laid down the law. So Dexter cut and cut into the soft green wood till he got through the little bough all but one thin piece of succulent bark, dancing up and down the while over the deep water some fifteen feet from the bank.

_Soss_!

That last vigorous cut did it, and the bough, with its summer burden of leaves, dropped with a splash into the water.

"There! What did I tell you!" cried Dexter's mentor. "Now you can get back and pull all out together. Fish won't bite for a bit after this, but they'll be all right soon."

Dexter shut up his knife, thrust it as well as he could into his pocket, and prepared to return.

This was not so easy, for he had to go backwards. What was more, he had to progress up hill. But, nothing daunted, he took tight hold with his hands, bore down upon them, and was in the act of thrusting himself along a few inches, when--_Crack_!

One loud, sharp, splintering crack, and the branch, which was rotten three parts through, broke short off close to the trunk, and like an echo to the crack came a tremendous--_Plash_!

That water, as already intimated, was deep, and, as a consequence, there was a tremendous splash, and branch and its rider went down right out of sight, twig after twig disappearing leisurely in the eddying swirl.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"THEM AS IS BORN TO BE HANGED."

It might have been presumed that Bob Dimsted would either have tried to render some a.s.sistance or else have raised an alarm.

Bob Dimsted did nothing of the kind.

For certain reasons of his own, and as one who had too frequently been in the hot water of trouble, Master Bob thought only of himself, and catching his line in his hand as he quickly drew it from the water, he hastily gathered up his fishing paraphernalia, and ran off as hard as he could go.

He had time, however, to see Dexter's wet head rise to the surface and then go down again, for the unwilling bather had one leg hooked in the bough, which took him down once more, as it yielded to the current, and the consequence was that when Dexter rose, breathless and half-strangled, he was fifty yards down the stream.

But he was now free, and giving his head a shake, he trod the water for a few moments, and then struck out for the sh.o.r.e, swimming as easily as a frog.

A few st.u.r.dy strokes took him out of the sharp current and into an eddy near the bank, by whose help he soon reached the deep still water, swimming so vigorously that before long he was abreast of the doctor's garden, where a group beneath the trees startled him more than his involuntary plunge.

For there, in a state of the greatest excitement, were the doctor and Helen, with Peter Cribb, with a clothes-prop to be used for a different purpose now.