the most magnificent fish he had ever seen leaped clear of the water. He leaped again and yet again. Johnny’s heart stood still. Then as he saw the fish vanish, felt the tug and knew he still had him, his heart went racing.

It was at this precise second in the long history of the world that Johnny’s ears were smitten by an unearthly scream. It came from the direction of that other pool, the foreigner’s death pool, the haunted pool. The scream was repeated not once but twice. It was followed by a loud splash.

There could be but one conclusion. Someone had been about to fall into the pool. That someone could not swim. Someone HAD fallen into the deep pool.

Johnny dropped his pole, heaved a sudden sigh of regret and at the same time dashed through the bushes. Arriving breathless at the edge of that other pool, he saw a head rise partially above the water. A mass of crinkly brown hair floated on the surface. Without further thought, Johnny plunged, clothes and all, into the pool, to begin an Australian crawl toward the spot where the head had been. But where was it? For a space of ten seconds, he could not locate it. When at last his racing gaze came to rest, it was upon a spot close to the opposite bank. The head was there, also a pair of fair, round shoulders.

Johnny paused in his swimming to see a girl, of some sixteen summers, emerge, fully clothed and dripping, from the pool.

Just then she turned about to look at him and say, as a rare smile played about her lips, “Oh! You in swimming too?”

To measure Johnny’s emotions at that moment would be impossible. The girl was beautiful. But the witch? Why had she screamed? Had she meant to deceive him? And his fish? Gone of course. Even a Tennessee shad could loose himself from a drifting pole like that.

“No,” he said, speaking slowly. “I’m not in swimming. I fell in, same as you did.”

“But I didn’t fall in,” the girl shook the water from her hair. “I jumped in.”

“And do you always scream like that when you dive?” Johnny was puzzled and angry.

“Nearly always.” The girl sat down upon a rock in the bright sunshine. “There’s some sort of bird that screams before he dives. I like it.”

“And I suppose,” Johnny said mockingly, “that you always go in clothes and all?”

“Always,” she said soberly. “It wouldn’t be quite decent not to unless you have a bathing suit. And I haven’t one. I’ve asked Dad to buy me one many times but he always forgets.”

“Who’s Dad?” Johnny asked quickly.

“Dad is Colonel Crider. I’m Jensie Crider. Now please,” there was a friendly note in her voice, “stop being ugly. Come on out in the sun. We’ll be all dry in a half hour. I want you to tell me about a lot of things.”

Jensie Crider, Johnny was thinking to himself. The very girl I’ve wanted to know. And such a meeting as this!

“You made me lose a black bass, a—a whopper,” he grinned in spite of himself.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” she was all sympathy. “But I’ll find you another, a bigger one. You wait and see!” She stood up to shake herself until her damp garments spun about her. “Now please do come up and get all dried out.”

Who could but obey this order from so beautiful a siren?

“Now tell me,” she said when Johnny had settled himself upon the rock, “what do you do besides catch fish?”

“Sometimes I go scouting for football players.”

“Do you find them?”

“Found one last night.”

“Down here in the mountains?” she voiced her surprise.

“It’s Ballard Ball. You’d be astonished. He’s an artful dodger. I—” he was about to tell her how he had found him but changed his mind. “I—I’m going to take him with me to college.”

“Oh, college.” The girl’s voice dropped. “Father wants me to go to college. I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I?”

Johnny told her why. He spoke in such glowing terms of big football games, wild rallies, of bonfires, and sings around great open fireplaces, the joyous friendships of youth and the satisfaction to be had from learning something new every day that at last quoting from last Sabbath’s Sunday School lesson, she murmured:

“‘Almost thou persuadest me.’”

“But see!” she sprang to her feet. “Now we are all dry. And I shall keep my promise. Now for that big, black bass!”