"Never mind stretching it out like that!" Wolfe interrupted angrily. "Go on with it!"
Mayfield grinned a broad, evil grin. He was enjoying to the fullest his hour of triumph.
"Why," he leered, "you're danged anxious to have it over with and git yore face burnt black and yore eyes burnt out, hain't ye?
"All right; as I said, I dived into the lake and found 'at the water wasn't so cold atter all. I paddled and kicked ontel I'd worked my way deep down in the lake. Thar I took yore coat out from the inside o' my shirt, ketched it by the bottom, and let myself come back to the top o' the water. The minute my head pops up into the wind, it mighty nigh freezes off, o' course. How I spluttered and puffed and blowed! Tot was a-standin' on the bank onder the beech; she was a-leanin' out toward me.
"'Did ye find him?' she says, anxious-like. 'Did ye find Little Buck fo' me? Oh,' she says, 'don't ye dare to tell me you never found him, Cat-Eye!'
"I swims to Tot, and reaches yore coat up to her.
"'He'd lodged ag'in a rock ledge down thar,' I tells her, wi' my teeth a-chatterin' from the cold wind. 'I ketched him by the bottom o' the coat; but he slipped out of it, and rolled off o' the rock ledge, and sunk on down, hundreds o' feet in 'at black hole! He's gone, pore little gyurl,' I says. 'He's gone forever. What a pity it was he couldn't swim!' I says.
"And Tot she stands thar a-starin' at me wi' them 'ar big, fine, purty blue eyes o' her'n filled wi' the tarment o' hell itself. I'll own up 'at I did feel jest a bit mean over what I was a-doin'—you ta' keer, or I'll pull the trigger and put out yore blasted eyes! Don't you make nary 'nother move like as ef ye was a-goin' to jump at me, neither; do ye onderstand me?
"Well, I crawls a-drippin' out in that turrible cold wind, and says to Tot, 'As I'm jest about to freeze to death,' says I, 'I reckon I'd better run to the fire.'