"A rope, a rope!" some one was calling. "Bring a rope this minute. There's a child in the water, near the boathouse, where the ice has been broken for the swans. Quickly, quickly, or we shall be too late!"
"No, a ladder will be better," declared a second voice. "A long ladder and a rope." Thereupon, a third informed the crowd that it was Lord Bentford's little boy who was in peril—his only child, indeed, and the heir to all his land.
"'Tis a wonder if the kid ain't drowned, for he's tumbled in at the deepest part," was the grim remark of one of the idlers who, a couple of hours since, had jeered at little Dick. "But then Death don't make no distinctions. And it's no more for his lordship to lose his youngster than 'twould be for me to lose one of mine."
"Oh, my child! My darling! He will be drowned—I know he will!" wailed the distracted mother. "Can nothing be done to save him? Oh, he will get beneath the boathouse, and—"
"Please—please, your ladyship," gasped Dick, elbowing his way through the crowd to the place where both parents were standing, "Stranger'll do it, if you let him try. Stranger'll save the little gentleman."
"Stranger?" Lord Bentford panted. "Who is Stranger, child?"
"My dog, your lordship. Here he is. He's a first-class swimmer is our Stranger."
Then leading the retriever to the brink of the ice, Dick pointed out the spot where the child had sunk.
"Fetch him," he cried incitingly. "Fetch him, good dog, good dog!"
And needing no further bidding, Stranger plunged into the lake and kept himself afloat while he looked eagerly about him.