the water.

“Wait! I’ll come and get you,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. She was just about to wade out to get Bert, shoes, skirts and all, when along came puffing, fat Dinah, and, just ahead of her, her husband, Sam.

“What’s the mattah, Mrs. Bobbsey?” asked the colored man, who did odd jobs around the Bobbsey home.

“It’s Bert! He’s fast in the mud!” answered Mrs. Bobbsey. “Oh, Sam, please hurry and get him out!”

“Yas’am, I’ll do dat!” cried Sam. He did not seem to be frightened. Perhaps he knew that the pond was not very deep where Bert was, and that the boy could not sink down much farther.

Sam had been washing the automobile with the hose, and when he did this he always wore his rubber boots. He had them on now, and so he could easily wade out into the pond without getting wet.

So out Sam waded, half running in fact, and splashing the water all about. But he did not mind that. As did Dinah, he loved the Bobbsey twins—all four of them—and he did not want anything to happen to them.

“Jest you stand right fast, Bert!” said the colored man. “I’ll have yo’ out ob dere in ’bout two jerks ob a lamb’s tail! Dat’s what I will!”

Bert did not know just how long it took to jerk a lamb’s tail twice, even if a lamb had been there. But it did not take Sam very long to reach the small boy.

“Now den, heah we go!” cried Sam.

Standing beside the raft, the colored man put his arms around Bert and lifted him. Or rather, he tried to lift him, for the truth of the matter was that Bert was stuck deeper in the mud than any one knew.

“Now, heah we go, suah!” cried Sam, as he took a tighter hold and lifted harder. And then with a jerk, Bert came loose and up out of the water he was lifted, his feet and legs dripping with black mud, some of which splashed on Sam and on the other twins.

“Oh, what a sight you are!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Oh, but good land of massy! Ain’t yo’ all thankful he ain’t all drown?” asked Dinah.

“Indeed I am,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Come on away from there, all of you. Get off the raft! I’m afraid it’s too dangerous to play that game. And, Bert, you must get washed! Oh, how dirty you are!”

Sam carried Bert to shore, and Nan helped Freddie push the raft to the edge of the pond. And then along came Mr. Bobbsey from his lumberyard.

“Well, well!” exclaimed the father of the Bobbsey twins. “What has happened?”

“We had a raft,” explained Freddie.

“And I had to toot the whistle when I wanted it to stop,” added Flossie.

“We were having a nice ride,” said Nan.

“Yes, but what happened to Bert?” asked his father, looking at his muddy son, who truly was a “sight.”

“Well, the raft got stuck,” Bert answered, “and I got off to push it loose. Then I got stuck. It was awful sticky mud. I didn’t know there was any so sticky in the whole world! First I thought it was quicksand. But I held on and then Sam came and got me out. I—I guess I got my pants a little muddy,” he said.

“I guess you did,” agreed his father, and his eyes twinkled as they always did when he wanted to laugh but did not feel that it would be just the right thing to do. “You are wet and muddy. But get up to the house and put on dry things. Then I have something to tell you.”

“Something to tell us?” echoed Nan. “Oh, Daddy! are we going away again?”

“Well, I’m not sure about that part—yet,” replied Mr. Bobbsey. “But I have strange news for you.”

CHAPTER III—STRANGE NEWS

Bert and Nan Bobbsey looked at one another. They were a little older than Flossie and Freddie, and they saw that something must have happened to make their father come home from the lumber