“I can’t,” said Dexter sadly. “We must try some other way. I’m going to dress again. Oh!”
“What’s the matter now!”
“My clothes!” Splash! Rush!
Dexter had rapidly lowered himself into the black deep stream and was swimming hard and fast, for as he rose and sought for his garments he suddenly recalled the fact that he had turned the box into a tiny barge, laden it with his clothes, and placed them in the river, while now, as he went to take them out, he found that the stream had borne the box away, and it was going down toward the sea.
“Try if you can see them, Bob,” said Dexter, as he panted and struggled on through the water.
“See what?”
“My clothes. They’re floating down the river.”
Bob uttered a low chuckling laugh, and trotted along by the edge of the river; but it was too dark for him to see anything, and Dexter, forgetting cold and dread, swam bravely on, looking well to right and left, without avail, till all at once, just in one of the deepest eddies, some fifty yards down below the doctor’s house, and where an unusually large willow spread its arms over the stream, he caught sight of something which blotted out the starlight for a moment, and then the stars’ reflection beamed out again.
Something was evidently floating there, and he made for it, to find to his great joy that it was the floating box, which he pushed before him as he swam, and a couple of minutes later he was near enough to the edge on the meadow-side to ask Bob’s help.
“Ain’t got ’em, have you?” the latter whispered.