"Why?"
"'Cos there's such a funny noise when yu strike the water."
Stamford flushed. "Did I scream?"
"If 'twas you," grinned Bean, "yu shure can throw yer voice high and far."
Stamford followed his eyes up the river cliff, and flushed again, this time for a different reason.
"Pshaw, Bean! You were excited."
"Then there was two of us, I reckon."
"I'm sure I must have screamed," said Stamford. "I was never so scared in my life." But his heart sang with the knowledge that Isabel Bulkeley, somewhere in the cliffs above, had feared for him.
"All right, have it yer own way. Only if I was you I wouldn't believe myself." He drew several long breaths and looked shyly at the man he had rescued. "God, if I hadn't been here!"
"Bean, I——" The surge of Stamford's gratitude was choking him.