“Ailwin, for shame!” cried Oliver. “I will fight you next, if you do so. You know you durst not, if his hands were free.”
“To be sure, Oliver, that is the very reason. One must take one’s revenge while one can. However, I won’t notice him any more till you do.”
“Cannot you set down your pail, and help me to row?” asked Oliver. He was quite tired. The raft was heavy now; his nose had not left off bleeding, and his head ached sadly. Three pulls from Ailwin brought them nearer home than all Oliver’s previous efforts. He observed that they must get round the house, if possible, and into the stream which ran through the garden, so as to land Roger on the Red-hill.
There was not much difficulty in getting round, as everything like a fence had long been swept away. As they passed near the entrance-door to the garden, they observed that the waters were still sinking. They stood now only half-way up the door-posts. Oliver declared that when he was a little less tired, he would go through the lower rooms in a tub, and see whether he could pick up anything useful. He feared, however, that almost everything must have been swept off through the windows, in the water-falls that Mildred had thought so pretty, the first day of the flood.
“There is a chest!” exclaimed Oliver, pointing to a little creek in which a stout chest had stuck. “Roger, I do believe it is the very chest that ... that we began our quarrel about. Come, now, is not this a sign that we ought to make it up?”
Roger would not appear to hear: so his companions made short work of it. They pulled in for the shore of the Red-hill, and laid Roger on the slimy bank:—for they saw no occasion to carry one so heavy and so sulky up to the nice bed of grass which was spread at the top of the red precipice that the waters had cut Oliver knew that there was a knife in Roger’s pocket. He took it out, cut the cord which tied his wrists, and threw the knife to a little distance, where Roger could easily reach it in order to free his legs; but not in time to overtake them before they should have put off again.
Roger made one catch at Oliver’s leg, but missing it, lay again as if dead; and Ailwin believed he had not yet stirred when the raft rounded the house again, with the great chest in tow.
Mildred was delighted to see them back, and especially without Roger. She thought Oliver’s face looked very shocking, but Oliver would not say a word about this, or anything else, till he had found Roger’s dog, and gone over in the basket, to set him ashore with his master.
“There!” said he, as he stepped in at the window when this was accomplished, “we have done their business. There they are, in their desert island, as they were before. Now we need not think any more about them, but attend to our own affairs.”
“Your face, Oliver! Pray do—”