Then he took his knife from his pocket and with great rapidity cut off a limb about the size of his wrist and reached the end down to Dick. He grasped it eagerly and held on tightly, while Miller pulled steadily and strongly.
It was quite a while before the pulling had any perceptible effect and then it was seen that Dick was slowly but surely rising out of the bog.
“I guess you are going to get out, all right, Mr. Dare,” said Miller. “There is lots of suction to that bog, though.”
“Yes. You are gradually pulling me up, and if I can get to that tree, I’ll be all right.”
“I’ll get you there in a few minutes, Mr. Dare.”
Miller kept on pulling till he got Dick out of the bog, and then he worked his way back to the main body of the tree, while Dick worked his way along on the top of the bog, and presently reached the tree. Here he stood, holding to the tree, while he rested for a few minutes, and then he climbed up among the branches, and was soon beside Miller.
“Thank you, very much, stranger,” Dick said. “You have saved my life.”
“I guess that’s so,” was the reply. “But you are welcome, and I am glad to have been able to render you assistance. All the more because you are a friend of Fritz, yonder, so he has told me, and he and his comrade, Tim Murphy, rescued me from a situation almost as unpleasant as the one I have rescued you from.”
“Indeed? I am surprised to see Fritz. I left him at the patriot encampment twenty miles from here, yesterday.”
“Yes. Well, he and his comrade, Tim Murphy, came to this region yesterday and they rescued me from the hands of a party of Tories that were going to give me a whipping with switches. They had already given me a coat of tar and feathers the same afternoon a few hours before.”
“Yes. I am the school-teacher at the school about a mile from the Tory settlement, and about two miles from the patriot settlement. But the Tories don’t like me, because I took the part of the patriot children at the school, when the Tory children were running over them, and so they did as I have told you.”
“I suppose you won’t teach school there any more, then?” enquired Dick.
“Better join the patriot army,” urged Dick.
“I might do that. I’ll think about it anyway.”