Chad watched with a thumping heart. Once Jack went under, but gave no sound. Again he disappeared, and when he came up he gave a cry for help, but when he heard Chad's answering cry he fought on stroke by stroke until Chad saw old Joel reach out from the bushes and pull him in. And Chad could see that one of his hind legs hung limp. Then the raft swung around the curve out of sight. 

 Behind, the whole crowd rushed down to the water's edge. Jack tried to get away from old Joel and scramble after Chad on his broken leg, but old Joel held him, soothing him, and carried him back to the house, where the old "yarb doctor" put splints on the leg and bound it up tightly, just as though it had been the leg of a child. Melissa was crying and the old man put his hand on her head. 

 "He'll be all right, honey. That leg'll be as good as the other one in two or three weeks. It's all right, little gal." 

 Melissa stopped weeping with a sudden gulp. But when Jack was lying in the kitchen by the fire alone, she slipped in and put her arm around the dog's head, and, when Jack began to lick her face, she bent her own head down and sobbed. 

 

 

 CHAPTER 5. 

 OUT OF THE WILDERNESS 

 On the way to God's Country at last! Already Chad had schooled himself for the parting with Jack, and but for this he must—little man that he was—have burst into tears. As it was, the lump in his throat stayed there a long while, but it passed in the excitement of that mad race down the river. The old Squire had never known such a tide. 

 "Boys," he said, gleefully, "we're goin' to make a REcord on this trip—you jus' see if we don't. That is, if we ever git thar alive." 

 All the time the old man stood in the middle of the raft yelling orders. Ahead was the Dillon raft, and the twin brothers—the giants, one mild, the other sour-faced—were gesticulating angrily at each other from bow and stern. As usual, they were quarrelling. On the Turner raft, Dolph was at the bow, the school-master at the stern, while Rube—who was cook—and Chad, in spite of a stinging pain in one foot, built an oven of stones, where coffee could be boiled and bacon broiled, and started a fire, for the air was chill on the river, especially when they were running between the hills and no sun could strike them. 

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