“But jest come down here a minute while I see if I can poke him out of his hole,” urged Sam, as he picked up a stick and started for the frog’s home.
Tim paid no attention to him; he had been sent for water, and he did not intend to waste any time until that work had been done. He leaned over the side of the hogshead to lower the pail in, when Sam shouted, “Come here; I’ve found him!”
But Tim went on with his work; and just as he had filled the pail, and was drawing it up, he heard a cry of fear, accompanied by a furious splashing, which he knew could not come from a frog, however large he might be.
Dropping his pail, at the risk of having it sink beyond his reach, he looked up just in time to see a pair of very fat legs sticking above the water at that point where the frog was supposed to reside, and to hear a gurgling sound, as if the owner of the legs was strangling.
For a single moment Tim was at a loss to account for the disappearance of Sam, and the sudden appearance of those legs; but by seeing Tip run toward the spot, barking furiously, and by seeing the stick which was to have disturbed the frog in his morning nap floating on the water, he understood that Sam had fallen into the pond, without having had half so much fun with the frog as he expected.
Tim, now thoroughly frightened, ran quickly toward his unfortunate companion, calling loudly for help.
When he reached the bank from which Sam had slipped the legs were still sticking straight up in the air, showing that their owner’s head had stuck fast in the mud. By holding on to the bushes with one hand, and stretching out the other, he succeeded in getting hold of Sam’s trousers, at which he struggled and pulled with all his strength. Although it could hardly be expected that so slight a boy as Tim could do very much toward handling so heavy a body as Sam’s, he did succeed in freeing him from the mud, and in pulling him to the surface of the water.
After nearly five minutes of hard work, during which Tip did all he could to help, Tim succeeded in pulling the fat boy into more shallow water, where he managed to get on to his feet again.
A mournful-looking picture he made as he stood on the bank, with the water running from every point of his clothing, while the black mud in which he had been stuck formed a cap for his head, and portions of it ran down over his face, striping him as decidedly as ever fancy painted an Indian.
He was a perfect picture of fat, woe, and dirt, and if he had not been in such peril a few moments before Tim would have laughed outright.