"Shall we try it, Archie?"
"We'll look it over."
"An' if we think——"
"Then we'll do it!"
Billy laughed.
"Archie," said he, "I—I—I likes you!"
"Shucks!" said Archie.
Archie walked the length of Ha-ha Shallow, from the swift water above Black Pool to Loon Lake, and returned, still searching the rapid for a good crossing, to a point near the Black Pool ice, where a choppy ripple promised a shallow, gravelled bottom. The stream was wide, shelving slowly from the shore—it was prattling water; but there was a fearsomely brief leeway of distance between the stretch of choppy ripple and the deep rush of the current as it swept into the shadows under the Black Pool ice.
Directly below the ripple, Rattle Water narrowed and deepened; nearing Black Pool, the banks were steep, and above the rising gorge, which the banks formed, and running the length of it, the current swelled over a scattering of slimy boulders and swirled around them. It was a perilous place to be caught. In the gravel-bottomed ripple, the water was too swift, too deep, for an overbalanced boy to regain his feet; and in the foaming, hurrying, deeper water below, the rough drift to Black Pool was inevitable: for the boulders were water-worn and round, and the surface was as slippery as grease with slime.
Having stared long enough at the alluring stretch of choppy ripple, Archie Armstrong came to a conclusion.