Read Matthew 25:14-30.

XXVI

"LET DOWN YOUR FEET!"

Say, fellows, something happened two summers ago at a well-known resort in the mountains, which even at this late day it quickens my pulse to recall. I was one of the very few eyewitnesses of the "tragedy," and it nearly put me to bed with nervous prostration. It was about twilight one evening when I passed near the lake on my way to our cottage for supper.

The gay throng of swimmers had apparently all dispersed to the hotels and cottages for the evening meal and preparation for the concert in the auditorium. That lake was a very popular place in the afternoon; there were accommodations for all grades of swimmers—from the expert divers who used the platform, spring-board, and tall diving ladder on the deep side, to the smallest children, who paddled and waded in the shallow water under the watchful care of their nurses on the other side. The lake was not over a hundred yards wide at the widest.

I was just noting how deserted and quiet was the place which only a few moments before had been fairly alive with a happy throng of sport lovers, little and big, when I saw coming toward the platform from the bath house a tall, thin man in his bathing suit. He looked so pale and weak and thin that I wondered if he could possibly be thinking of going into that cold water at that time of evening and alone!

I had not long to be in doubt about it, for straight out on the platform he went and then on the spring-board! He lifted his arms above his head and pointed his hands together as a man going to dive. The man looked so weak and thin that I felt positive he would not be able to swim in that water, so chilled by the mountain springs that fed it. I wondered if he knew how cold it was and how weak he was.

Should I run the risk of "butting in," and warn him? Suppose I did not and he should begin to sink, could I jump in that fifteen-foot water with my clothes on and save him? These thoughts flashed rapidly through my mind, but in the twinkling of an eye he was off the spring-board, head downward into the water.