“I tell you, they look ugly!” said he, with another involuntary shudder. “If it hadn’t been for you, George, there would have been two vacant seats at the Montford Academy next Monday. What’s that wedged in between those two high rocks, a little to the left of the point? It looks to me like a piece of my lost canoe.”
“That’s just what it is!” answered George, “We’ll go up there and take a look at it as soon as I find out whether or not I am going to get that gun. We are pretty near the spot now. Steady! There!”
As Bob ceased rowing and faced about on his seat, there was a splash in the water, and George had disappeared. He was gone a good while—so long that the two boys who were awaiting the result of his experiment, began to look at each other with some uneasiness.
At length, Dick asked suddenly:
“I say, Bob, what are you going to give him if he finds your gun for you?”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to speak to you about,” was Bob’s reply. “I don’t think it would be quite the thing to offer him money, for he doesn’t look to me like a boy who would go to all this trouble for the sake of earning a reward.”
“That’s my opinion, and I will tell you what I have been thinking of. You know he said he would like to go to the academy; and he said it in a way that led me to believe that the only obstacle that stands in his way is a lack of money. Now you and I have more spare change than we can use, and if you will pay half his tuition, I’ll pay the other half. He needn’t know that we’re doing anything for him, for I have an idea that he would refuse—”
Before Dick could finish his sentence, George’s head bobbed up out of the water, a short distance away; but the only thing he brought with him was a handful of gravel, to show that he had been to the bottom.
A few long, sweeping strokes brought him alongside the boat. He climbed in over the bow, and, after taking a moment’s breathing spell, he went down again.
This time he was gone longer than before, and Dick and Bob had ample leisure to decide upon something.