Love and Skates: In Two Parts. Part Ii

CHAPTER VII.

WADE DOWN !

THE hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to be done metaphorically, since it was done in the sight of all Dunderbunk.

He had divined a happy result, when he missed Bill Tarbox from the arena, and saw him a furlong away, hand in hand with his reconciled sweetheart.

“ I envy you, Bill,” said he, “ almost too much to put proper fervor into my congratulations.”

“ Your time will come,” the foreman rejoined.

And says Belle, “ I am sure there is a lady skating somewhere, and only waiting for you to follow her.”

“ I don’t see her,” Wade replied, looking with a mock-grave face up and down and athwart the river. “ When you ’ve all gone, to dinner, I ’ll prospect ten miles up and down and try to find a good matrimonial claim that’s not taken.”

“You will not come up to dinner ?” Belle asked.

“ I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holiday,” said Wade. "I ’ve sent Perry up for a luncheon. Here he comes with it. So I cede my quarter of your pie, Miss Belle, to a better fellow.”

“ Oh! ” cries Perry, coming up and bowing elaborately. "Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, I believe. Ah, yes ! Well, I will mention it up at Albany. I am going to take my Guards up to call on the Governor.”

Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunderbunk boys, organized by him as the Purtett Guards, and taught to salute him as Generalissimo with military honors.

So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn, now began to have an effect upon the atmosphere. Few odors are more subtile and pervading than this, and few more appetizing. Indeed, there is said to be an odd fellow, a strictly American gourmand, in New York, who sits, from noon to dusk on Cliristmas-Day, up in a tall steeple, merely to catch the aroma of roast-turkey floating over the city, — and much good, it is said, it does him.

Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet hunger as this gentleman’s expedient. When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of Ceylon’s isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its several noses—snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, fines, bulgies, and bifids — on the way to the several households which those noses adorned or defaced. Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, a DINNER, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully remembered by many over-fed foundry-men and their over-fed families.

Wade had not had half skating enough. “ I ’ll time myself down to Skerrett’s Point,” he thought, "and take my luncheon there among the hemlocks.”

The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade’s friend and college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade’s eyes the rumor of his return.

Skerrett’s Point was a mile below the Foundry. Our hero did his mile under three minutes. How many seconds un der, I will not say. I do not wish to make other fellows unhappy.

The Point was a favorite spot of Wade’s. Many a twilight of last sum mer, tired with his fagging at the Works to make good the evil of Whiffler’s rule, he had lain there on the rocks under the hemlocks, breathing the spicy methyl they poured into the air. After his day’s hard fight, in the dust and heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he used to take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until the murmur and fragrance of the woods, the cool wind, and the soothing loiter of the shining stream had purged him from the fevers of his task.

To this old haunt he skated, and kindling a little fire, as an old campaigner loves to do, he sat down and lunched heartily on Mrs. Purtett’s cold leg,— cannibal thought! — on the cold leg of Mrs. Purtett's yesterday’s turkey. Then lighting his weed, — dear ally of the lonely,— the Superintendent began to think of his foreman’s bliss, and to long for something similar on his own plane.

“ I hope the wish is father to its fulfilment,” he said. “ But I must not stop here and be spooney. Such a halcyon day I may not have again in all my life, and I ought to make the best of it, with my New Skates.”

So he dashed off, and filled the little cove above the Point with a labyrinth of curves and flourishes.

When that bit of crystal tablet was well covered, the podographer sighed for a new sheet to inscribe his intricate rubrieas upon. Why not write more stanzas of the poetry of motion on the ice below the Point ? Why not ?

Braced by his lunch on the brown fibre of good Mrs. Purtett’s cold drumstick and thigh, Wade was now in fine trim. The air was more glittering and electric than ever. It was triumph and victory and pæan in action to go flashing along over this footing, smoother than polished marble and sheenier than firstwater gems.

Wade felt the high exhilaration of pure blood galloping through a body alive from top to toe. The rhythm of his movement was like music to him.

The Point ended in a sharp promontory. Just before he came abreast of it, Wade under mighty headway flung into his favorite corkscrew spiral on one foot, and went whirling dizzily along, round and round, in a straight line.

At the dizziest moment, he was suddenly aware of a figure, also turning the Point at full speed, and rushing to a collision.

He jerked aside to avoid it. He could not look to his footing. His skate struck a broken oar, imbedded in the ice. He fell violently, and lay like a dead man.

His New Skates, Testimonial of Merit, seem to have served him a shabby trick.

CHAPTER VIII.

TÊTE-À-TÊTE.

SEEING Wade lie there motionless, the lady—

Took off her spectacles, blew her great red nose, and stiffly drew near.

Spectacles ! Nose ! No, — the latter feature of hers had never become acquainted with the former; and there was as little stiffness as nasal redness about her.

A fresh start, then, — and this time accuracy !

Appalled by the loud thump of the stranger’s skull upon the chief river of the State of New York, the lady — it was a young lady whom Wade had tumbled to avoid — turned, saw a human being lying motionless, and swept gracefully toward him, like a Good Samaritan, on the outer edge. It was not her fault, but her destiny, that she had to be graceful even under these tragic circumstances.

“ Dead!” she thought. “ Is he dead ? ”

The appalling thump had cracked the ice, and she could not know how well the skull was cushioned inside with brains to resist a blow.

She shuddered, as she swooped about toward this possible corpse. It might be that he was killed, and half the fault hers. No wonder her fine color, shining in the right parts of an admirably drawn face, all disappeared instantly.

But she evidently was not frightened. She halted, kneeled, looked curiously at the stranger, and then proceeded, in a perfectly cool and self-possessed way, to pick him up.

A solid fellow, heavy to lift in his present lumpish condition of dead-weight! She had to tug mightily to get him up into a sitting position. When he was raised, all the backbone seemed gone from his spine, and it took the whole force of her vigorous arms to sustain him.

The effort was enough to account for the return of her color. It came rushing back splendidly. Cheeks, forehead, everything but nose, blushed. The hard work of lifting so much avoirdupois, and possibly, also, the novelty of supporting so much handsome fellow, intensified all her hues. Her eyes — blue, or that shade even more faithful than blue — deepened ; and her pale golden hair grew several carats — not carrots — brighter.

She was repaid for her active sympathy at once by discovering that this big, awkward thing was not a dead, but only a stunned, body. It had an ugly bump and a bleeding cut on its manly skull, but otherwise was quite an agreeable object to contemplate, and plainly on its “ unembarrassed brow Nature had written ‘Gentleman.’ ”

As this young lady had never had a fair, steady stare at a stunned hero before, she seized her advantage. She had hitherto been distant with the other sex. She had no brother. Not one of her male cousins had ever ventured near enough to get those cousinly privileges that timid cousins sigh for and plucky cousins take, if they are worth taking.

Wade’s impressive face, though for the moment blind as a statue's, also seized its advantage and stared at her intently, with a pained and pleading look, new to those resolute features.

Wade was entirely unconscious of the great hit he had made by his tumble : plump into the arms of this heroine! There were fellows extant who would have suffered any imaginable amputation, any conceivable mauling, any fling from the apex of anything into the lowest deeps of anywhere, for the honor he was now enjoying.

But all he knew was that his skull was a beehive in an uproar, and that one lobe of his brain was struggling to swarm off. His legs and arms felt as if they belonged to another man, and a very limp one at that. A ton of cast-iron seemed to be pressing his eyelids down, and a trickle of red-hot metal flowed from his cut forehead.

“ I shall have to scream,” thought the lady, after an instant of anxious waiting, “ if he does not revive. I cannot leave him to go for help.”

Not a prude, you see. A prude would have had cheap scruples about compromising herself by taking a man in her arms. Not a vulgar person, who would have required the stranger to be properly recommended by somebody who came over in the Mayflower, before she helped him. Not a feeble-minded damsel, who, it she had not fainted, would have fled away, gasping and in tears. No timidity or prudery or underbred doubts about this thorough creature. She knew she was in her right womanly place, and she meant to stay there.

But she began to need help, possibly a lancet, possibly a pocket-pistol, possibly hot blankets, possibly somebody to knead these lifeless lungs and pommel this flaccid body, until circulation was restored.

Just as she was making up her mind to scream, Wade stirred. He began to tingle as if a familiar of the Inquisition were slapping him all over with fine-toothed curry-combs. He became half-conscious of a woman supporting him. In a stammering and intoxicated voice he murmured, —

He opened his eyes. It was not his mother; for she was long since deceased. Nor was this non-mother kissing the place.

In fact, abashed at the blind eyes suddenly unclosing so near her, she was on the point of letting her burden drop. When dead men come to life in such a position, and begin to talk about “kissing the place,” young ladies, however independent of conventions, may well grow uneasy.

But the stranger, though alive, was evidently in a molluscous, invertebrate condition. He could not sustain himself. She still held him up, a little more at arm’slength, and all at once the reaction from extreme anxiety brought a gush of tears to her eyes.

“ Don’t cry,” says Wade, vaguely, and still only half-conscious. “ I promise never to do so again.”

At this, said with a childlike earnestness, the lady smiled.

“Don’t scalp me,” Wade continued, in the same tone. “ Squaws never scalp.”

He raised his hand to his bleeding forehead.

She laughed outright at his queer plaintive tone and the new class he had placed her in.

Her laugh and his own movement brought Wade fully to himself. She perceived that his look was transferring her from the order of scalping squaws to her proper place as a beautiful young woman of the highest civilization, not smeared with vermilion, but blushing celestial rosy.

“ Thank you,” said Wade. “ I can sit up now without assistance.” And he regretted profoundly that good breeding obliged him to say so.

She withdrew her arms. He rested on the ice, — posture of the Dying Gladiator. She made an effort to be cool and distant as usual; but it would not do. This weak mighty man still interested her. It was still her business to be strength to him.

He made a feeble attempt to wipe away the drops of blood from his forehead with his handkerchief.

“ Let me be your surgeon ! ” said she.

She produced her own folded handkerchief, — M. D. were the initials in the corner, — and neatly and tenderly turbaned him.

Wade submitted with delight to this treatment. A tumble with such trimmings was luxury indeed.

“ Who would not break his head,” he thought, “to have these delicate fingers plying about him, and this pure, noble face so close to his ? What a queenly indifferent manner she has ! What a calm brow ! What honest eyes ! What a firm nose 1 What equable cheeks ! What a grand indignant mouth ! Not a bit afraid of me ! She feels that I am a gentleman and will not presume.”

“ There ! ” said she, drawing back. “ Is that comfortable ? ”

“ Luxury ! ” he ejaculated with fervor.

“ I am afraid I am to blame for your terrible fall.”

“ No, — my own clumsiness and that oar-blade are in fault.”

“ If you feel well enough to be left alone, I will skate off and call my friends.”

“ Please do not leave me quite yet ! ” says Wade, entirely satisfied with the tête-à-tête.

“ Ah 1 here comes Mr. Skerrett round the Point!” she said,— and sprang up, looking a little guilty.

CHAPTER IX.

LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE.

PETER SKERRETT came sailing round the purple rocks of his Point, skating like a man who has been in the South of Europe for two winters.

He was decidedly Anglicized in his whiskers, coat, and shoes. Otherwise he in all respects repeated his well-known ancestor, Skerrett of the Revolution; whose two portraits — 1. A ruddy hero in regimentals, in Gilbert Stuart’s early brandy-and-water manner; 2. A rosy

sage in Senatorial, in Stuart’s later claret-and-water manner — hang in his descendant’s dining-room.

Peter’s first look was a provokingly significant one at the confused and blushing young lady. Secondly he inspected the Dying Gladiator on the ice.

“ Have you been tilting at this gentleman, Mary ? ” he asked, in the voice of a cheerful, friendly fellow. “ Why ! Hullo. Hooray ! It’s Wade, Richard Wade, Dick Wade ! Don’t look, Miss Mary, while I give him the grips of all the secret societies we belonged to in College.”

Mary, however, did look on, pleased and amused, while Peter plumped down on the ice, shook his friend’s hand, and examined him as if he were fine crockery, spilt and perhaps shattered.

“ It ’s not a case of trepanning, Dick, my boy ? ” said he.

“ No,” said the other. “ I tumbled in trying to dodge this lady. The ice thought my face ought to be scratched, because I had been scratching its face without mercy. My wits were knocked out of me; but they are tired of secession, and pleading to be let in again.”

“ Keep some of them out for our sake ! We must have you at our commonplace level. Well, Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you have had the sensation of breaking a man’s head. You generally hit lower.” Peter tapped his heart.

“I’m all right now, thanks to my surgeon,” says Wade. “ Give me a lift, Peter.” He pulled up and clung to his friend.

“ You ’re the vine and I ’m the lamppost,” Skerrett said. “Mary, do you know what a pocket-pistol is ? ”

“ I have seen such weapons concealed about the persons of modern warriors.”

“ There’s one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup at the butt and a cork at the muzzle. Skate off now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too. She is restorative.”

“ Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick ? ” he continued, as she skimmed away.

“ It would put a soul under the ribs of Death.”

“I venerate that young woman,” says Peter. “ You see what a beauty she is, and just as unspoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer than rocs’ eggs.”

“ She has a singularly true face,” Wade replied, “ and that is the main thing, — the most excellent thing in man or woman.”

“ Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, tolerable.”

“ You did not do me the honor to present me.”

“I saw you had gone a great way beyond that, my boy. Have you not her initials in cambric on your brow? Not M. T., which would n’t apply; but M. D.”

“ Mary—? ”

“ Damer. ”

“ I like the name,” says Wade, repeating it. “ It sounds simple and thoroughbred.”

“Just what she is. One of the nine simple-hearted and thorough-bred girls on this continent.”

“ Nine ? ”

“ Is that too many ? Three, then. That’s one in ten millions. The exact proportion of Poets, Painters, Orators, Statesmen, and all other Great Artists. Well, — three or nine, — Mary Damer is one of them. She never saw fear or jealousy, or knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an ungentle word or an ungraceful act in herself. Her atmosphere does not tolerate flirtation. You must And out for yourself how much genius she has and has not. But I will say this, — that I think of puns two a minute faster when I’m with her. Therefore she must be magnetic, and that is the first charm in a woman.”

Wade laughed.

“ You have not lost your powers of analysis, Peter. But talking of this heroine, you have not told me anything about yourself, except apropos of punning.”

“ Come up and dine, and we ’ll fire away personal histories, broadside for broadside ! I’ve been looking in vain for a worthy hero to set vis-à-vis to my fair kinswoman. But stop ! perhaps you have a Christmas turkey at home, with a wife opposite, and a brace of boys waiting for drumsticks.”

“No, — my boys, like cherubs, await their own drumsticks. They ’re not born, and I’m not married.”

“I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal. Well, I will show you a model wife, — and here she comes ! ”

Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round the Point, with draperies floating as artlessly artful as the robes of Raphael’s Hours, or a Pompeian Bacchante. For want of classic vase or patera, Miss Damer brandished Peter Skerrett’s pocket-pistol.

Fanny Skerrett gave her hand cordially to Wade, and looked a little anxiously at his pale face.

“ Now, M. D.,” says Peter, “ yon have been surgeon, you shall be doctor and dose our patient. Now, then,—

Wade said, continuing the quotation,—

“ We effeminate women of the nineteenth century are afraid of broken heads,” said Fanny. “ But Mary Damer seems quite to enjoy your accident, Mr. Wade, as an adventure.”

Miss Damer certainly did seem gay and exhilarated.

“ I enjoy it,” said Wade. “ I perceive that I fell on my feet, when I fell on my crown. I tumbled among old friends, and I hope among new ones.”

“ I have been waiting to claim my place among your old friends,” Mrs. Skerrett said, “ ever since Peter told me you were one of his models.”

She delivered this little speech with a caressing manner which totally fascinated Wade.

Nothing was ever so absolutely pretty as Mrs. Peter Skerrett. Her complete prettiness left nothing to be desired.

“Never,” thought Wade, “did I see such a compact little casket of perfections. Every feature is thoroughly well done and none intrusively superior. Her little nose is a combination of all the amiabilities. Her black eyes sparkle with fun and mischief and wit, all playing over deep tenderness below. Her hair ripples itself full of gleams and shadows. The same coquetry of Nature that rippled her hair has dinted her cheeks with shifting dimples. Every time she smiles — and she smiles as if sixty an hour were not half allowance — a dimple slides into view and vanishes like a dot in a flow of sunny water. And, O Peter Skerrett ! if you were not the best fellow in the world, I should envy you that latent kiss of a mouth.”

“You need not say it, Wade, — your broken head exempts you from the business of compliments,” said Peter ; “ but I see you think my wife perfection. You ’ll think so the more, the more you know her.”

“ Stop, Peter,” said she, “or I shall have to hide behind the superior charms of Mary Damer.”

Miss Damer certainly was a woman of a grander order. You might pull at the bells or knock at the knockers and be Introduced into the boudoirs of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, and palaces in Christendom without seeing such another. She belonged distinctly to the Northern races,—the “brave and true and tender ” women. There was, indeed, a trace of hauteur and imperiousness in her look and manner; but it did not ill become her distinguished figure and face. Wade, however, remembered her sweet earnestness when she was playing leech to his wound, and chose to take that mood as her dominant one.

“ She must have been desperately annoyed with bores and boobies,” he thought“ I do not wonder she protects herself by distance. I am afraid I shall never get within her lines again, — not even if I should try slow and regular approaches, and bombard her with bouquets for a twelvemonth.”

“ But, Wade,” says Peter, “ all this time you have not told us what good luck sends you here to be wrecked on the hospitable shores of my Point.”

“ I live here. I am chief cook and confectioner where you see the smoking top of that tall chimney up-stream.”

“ Why, of course ! What a dolt I was, not to think of you, when Churm told us an Athlete, a Brave, a Sage, and a Gentleman was the Superintendent of Dunderbunk ; but said we must find his name out for ourselves. You remember, Mary. Miss Damer is Mr. Churm’s ward.”

She acknowledged with a cool bow that she did remember her guardian’s character of Wade.

“ You do not say, Peter,” says Mrs. Skerrett, with a bright little look at the other lady, “ why Mr. Churm was so mysterious about Mr. Wade.”

“ Miss Damer shall tell us,” Peter rejoined, repeating his wife’s look of merry significance.

She looked somewhat teased. Wade could divine easily the meaning of this little mischievous talk. His friend Churm had no doubt puffed him furiously.

“ All this time,” said Miss Damer, evading a reply, “ we are neglecting our skating privileges.”

“ Peter and I have a few grains of humanity in our souls,” Fanny said. “ We should blush to sail away from Mr. Wade, while he carries the quarantine flag at his pale cheeks.”

“ I am almost ruddy again,” says Wade. “ Your potion, Miss Damer, has completed the work of your surgery. I can afford to dismiss my lamp-post.”

“ Whereupon the post changes to a teetotum,” Peter said, and spun off in an eccentric, ending in a tumble.

“ I must have a share in your restoration, Mr. Wade,” Fanny claimed. “I see you need a second dose of medicine. Hand me the flask, Mary. What shall I pour from this magic bottle ? juice of Rhine, blood of Burgundy, fire of Spain, bubble of Rheims, beeswing of Oporto, honey of Cyprus, nectar, or whiskey ? Whiskey is vulgar, but the proper thing, on the whole, for these occasions. I prescribe it.” And she gave him another little draught to imbibe.

He took it kindly, for her sake,— and not alone for that, but for its own respectable sake. His recovery was complete. His head, to be sure, sang a little still, and ached not a little. Some fellows would have gone on the sick list with such a wound. Perhaps he would, if he had had a trouble to dodge. But here instead was a pleasure to follow. So he began to move about slowly, watching the ladies.

Fanny was a novice in the Art, and this was her first day this winter. She skated timidly, holding Peter very tightly. She went into the dearest little panics for fear of tumbles, and uttered the most musical screams and laughs. And if she succeeded in taking a few brave strokes and finished with a neat slide, she pleaded for a verdict of “ Well done ! ” with such an appealing smile and such a fine show of dimples that every one was fascinated and applauded heartily.

Miss Damer skated as became her free and vigorous character. She had passed her Little Go as a scholar, and was now steadily winning her way through the list of achievements, before given, toward the Great Go. To-day she was at work at small circles backward. Presently she wound off a series of perfectly neat ones, and, looking up, pleased with her prowess, caught Wade’s admiring eye. At this she smiled and gave an arch little womanly nod of self-approval, which also demanded masculine sympathy before it was quite a perfect emotion.

With this charming gesture, the alert feather in her Amazonian hat nodded, too, as if it admired its lovely mistress.

Wade was thrilled. “ Brava ! ” he cried, in answer to the part of her look which asked sympathy; and then, in reply to the implied challenge, he forgot his hurt and his shock, and struck into the same figure.

He tried not to surpass his fair exemplar too cruelly. But he did his peripheries well enough to get a repetition of the captivating nod and a Bravo! from the lady.

“ Bravo! ” said she. “ But do not tax your strength too soon.”

She began to feel that she was expressing too much interest in the stranger. It was a new sensation for her to care whether men fell or got up. A new sensation. She rather liked it. She was a trifle ashamed of it. In either case, she did not wish to show that it was in her heart. The consciousness of concealment flushed her damask cheek.

It was a damask cheek. All her hues were cool and pearly ; while Wade, Saxon too, had hot golden tints in his hair and moustache, and his color, now returning, was good strong red with plenty of bronze in it.

“ Thank you,” he replied. “ My force has all come back. You have electrified me.”

A civil nothing ; but meaning managed to get into his tone and look, whether he would or not.

Which he perceiving, on his part began to feel guilty.

Of what crime ?

Of the very same crime as hers, — the most ancient and most pardonable Crime of youth and maiden, — that sweet and guiltless crime of love in the first degree.

So, without troubling themselves to analyze their feelings, they found a piquant pleasure in skating together, — she in admiring his tours de force, and he in instructing her.

“ Look, Peter ! ” said Mrs. Skerrett, pointing to the other pair skating, he on the backward roll, she on the forward, with hands crossed and locked;—such contacts are permitted in skating, as in dancing. “ Your hero and my heroine have dropped into an intimacy.”

“ None but the Plucky deserve the Pretty,” says Peter.

“ But he seems to be such a fine fellow,—suppose she should n’t”—

The pretty face looked anxious.

“ Suppose he should n’t,” Peter on the masculine behalf returned.

“ He cannot help it: Mary is so noble, — and so charming, when she does not disdain to be.”

“ I do not believe she can help it. She cannot disdain Wade. He carries too many guns for that. He is just as fine as she is. He was a hero when I first knew him. His face does not show an atom of change ; and you know what Mr. Churm told us of his chivalrie deeds elsewhere, and how he tamed and reformed Dunderbunk. He is crystal grit, as crystalline and gritty as he can be.”

“ Grit seems to be your symbol of the highest qualities. It certainly is a better thing in man than in ice-cream. But, Peter, suppose this should be a true love and should not run smooth ? ”

“ What consequence is the smooth running, so long as there is strong running and a final getting in neck and neck at the winning-post? ”

“ But,” still pleaded the anxious soul,— having no anxieties of her own, she was always suffering for others,— “he seems to be such a fine fellow! and she is so hard to win ! ”

“ Am I a fine fellow ? ”

“ No, — horrid ! ”

“ The truth, —or I let you tumble.” “Well, upon compulsion, I admit that you are.”

“ Then being a fine fellow does not diminish the said fellow’s chances of being blessed with a wife quite superfine.”

“ If I thought you were personal, Peter, I should object to the mercantile adjective. ‘ Superfine,’ indeed ! ”

“ I am personal. I withdraw the obnoxious phrase, and substitute transcendent. No, Fanny dear, I read Wade’s experience in my own. I do not feel very much concerned about him. He is big enough to take care of himself. A man who is sincere, self-possessed, and steady does not get into miseries with beautiful Amazons like our friend. He knows too much to try to make his love run up hill; but let it once get started, rough running gives it vim. Wade will love like a deluge, when he sees that he may, and I ’d advise obstacles to stand off.”

“ It was pretty, Peter, to see cold Mary Damer so gentle and almost tender.”

“ I always have loved to see the first beginnings of what looks like love, since I saw ours.”

“ Ours,” she said,— “ it seems like yesterday.”

And then together they recalled that fair picture against its dark ground of sorrow, and so went on refreshing the emotions of that time until Fanny smiling said,—

“ There must be something magical in skates, for here we are talking sentimentally like a pair of young lovers.”

“ Health and love are cause and effect,” says Peter, sententiously.

Meanwhile Wade had been fast skating into the good graces of his companion. Perhaps the rap on his head had deranged him. He certainly tossed himself about in a reckless and insane way. Still he justified his conduct by never tumbling again, and by inventing new devices with bewildering rapidity.

This pair were not at all sentimental. Indeed, their talk was quite technical: all about rings and edges, and heel and toe, — what skates are best, and who best use them. There is an immense amount of sympathy to be exchanged on such topics, and it was somewhat significant that they avoided other themes where they might not sympathize so thoroughly. The negative part of a conversation is often as important as its positive.

So the four entertained themselves finely, sometimes as a quartette, sometimes as two duos with proper changes of partners, until the clear west began to grow golden and the clear east pink with sunset.

“ It is a pity to go,” said Peter Skerrett. “ Everything here is perfection and Fine Art; but we must not be unfaithful to dinner. Dinner would have a right to punish us, if we did not encourage its efforts to be Fine Art also.”

“ Now, Mr. Wade,” Fanny commanded, “ your most heroic series of exploits, to close this heroic day.”

He nimbly dashed through his list. The ice was traced with a labyrinth of involuted convolutions.

Wade’s last turn brought him to the very spot of his tumble.

“ Ah ! ” said he. “ Here is the oar that tripped me, with ‘ Wade, his mark,’ gashed into it. If I had not this ” — he touched Miss Damer’s handkerchief—

“ for a souvenir, I think I would dig up the oar and carry it home,”

Let it melt out and float away in the spring,” Mary said. “ It may be a perch for a sea-gull or a buoy for a drowning man.”

Here, if this were a long story instead of a short one, might be given a description of Peter Skerrett’s house and the menu of Mrs. Skerrett’s dinner. Peter and his wife had both been to great pillory dinners, ad nauseam, and learnt what to avoid. How not to be bored is the object of all civilization, and the Skerretts had discovered the methods.

I must dismiss the dinner and the evening, stamped with the general epithet, Perfection.

“ You will join us again to-morrow on the river,” said Mrs. Skerrett, as Wade rose to go.

“ To-morrow I go to town to report to my Directors.”

“ Then next day.”

“ Next day, with pleasure.”

Wade departed and marked this halcyon day with white chalk, as the whitest, brightest, sweetest of his life.

CHAPTER X.

FOREBODINGS.

JUBILATION! Jubilation now,instead of Consternation, in the office of Mr. Benjamin Brummage in Wall Street.

President Brummage had convoked his Directors to hear the First Semi-Annual Report of the new Superintendent and Dictator of Dunderbunk.

And there they sat around the green table, no longer forlorn and dreading a failure, but all chuckling with satisfaction over their prosperity.

They were a happy and hilarious family now,—so hilarious that the President was obliged to be always rapping to Orderr with his paper-knife.

Every one of these gentlemen was proud of himself as a Director of so successful a Company. The Dunderbunk advertisement might now consider itself as permanent in the newspapers, and the Treasurer had very unnecessarily inserted the notice of a dividend, which everybody knew of already.

When Mr. Churm was not by, they all claimed the honor of having discovered Wade, or at least of having been the first to appreciate him.

They all invited him to dinner, — the others at their houses, Sam Gwelp at his club.

They had not yet begun to wax fat and kick. They still remembered the panic of last summer. They passed a unanimous vote of the most complimentary confidence in Wade, approved of his system, forced upon him an increase of salary, and began to talk of “ launching out” and doubling their capital. In short, they behaved as Directors do when all is serene.

Churm and Wade had a hearty laugh over the absurdities of the Board and all their vague propositions.

“ Dunderbunk,” said Churm, “ was a company started on a sentimental basis, as many others are.”

“ Mr. Brummage fell in love with pigiron ? ”

“ Precisely. He had been a dry-goods jobber, risen from a retailer somewhere in the country. He felt a certain lack of dignity in his work. He wanted to deal in something more masculine than lace and ribbons. He read a sentimental article on Iron in the ‘Journal of Commerce’: how Iron held the world together; how it was nerve and sinew ; how it was ductile and malleable and other things that sounded big; how without Iron civilization would stop, and New Zealanders hunt rats among the ruins of London ; how anybody who would make two tons of Iron grow where one grew before was a benefactor to the human race greater than Alexander, Cæsar, or Napoleon; and so on, — you know the eloquent style. Brummage’s soul was fired. He determined to be greater than the three heroes named. He was oozing with unoccupied capital. He went about among the other rich jobbers, with the newspaper article in his hand, and fired their souls. They determined to be great Iron-Kings,—magnificent thought! They wanted to read in the newspapers, ‘If all the iron rails made at the Dunderbunk Works in the last six months were put together in a straight line, they would reach twice round our terraqueous globe and seventy-three miles two rails over.’ So on that poetic foundation they started the concern.”

Wade laughed. “ But how did you happen to be with them ? ”

“ Oh ! my friend Damer sold them the land for the shop and took stock in payment. I came into the Board as his executor. Did I never tell you so before ? ”

“ No.”

“ Well, then, be informed that it was in Miss Darner’s behalf that you knocked down Friend Tar box, and so got your skates for saving her property. It’s quite a romance already, Richard, my boy ! and I suppose you feel immensely bored that you had to come down and meet us old chaps, instead of tumbling at her feet on the ice again to-day.”

“ A tumble in this wet day would be a cold bath to romance.”

The Gulf Stream had sent up a warm spoil-sport rain that morning. It did not stop, but poured furiously the whole day.

From Cohoes to Spuyten Duyvil, on both sides of the river, all the skaters swore at the weather, as profane persons no doubt did when the windows of heaven were opened in Noah’s time. The skateresses did not swear, but savagely said, “ It is too bad,”—and so it was.

Wade, loaded with tire blessings of his Directors, took the train next morning for Dunderbunk,

The weather was still mild and drizzly, but promised to clear. As the train rattled along by the river, Wade could see that the thin ice was breaking up everywhere. In mid-stream a procession of blocks was steadily drifting along. Unless Zero came sliding down again pretty soon from Boreal regions, the sheets that filled the coves and clung to the shores would also sail away southward, and the whole Hudson be left clear as in midsummer.

At Yonkers a down train ranged by the side of Wade’s train, and, looking out, he saw Mr. and Mrs. Skerrett alighting.

He jumped down, rather surprised, to speak to them.

“ We have just been telegraphed here,” said Peter, gravely. “ The son of a widow, a friend of ours, was drowned this morning in the soft ice of the river. He was a pet of mine, poor fellow ! and the mother depends upon me for advice. We have come down to say a kind word. Why won’t you report us to the ladies at my house, and say we shall not be at home until the evening train ? They do not know the cause of our journey, except that it is a sad one.”

“ Perhaps Mr. Wade will carve their turkey for them at dinner, Peter,” Fanny Suggested.

“Do, Wade! and keep their spirits up. Dinner’s at six.”

Here the engine whistled. Wade promised to “ shine substitute ” at his friend’s board, and took his place again. The train galloped away.

Peter and his wife exchanged a bright look over the fortunate incident of this meeting, and went on their kind way to carry sympathy and such consolation as might be to the widow.

The train galloped northward. Until now, the beat of its wheels, like the click of an enormous metronome, had kept time to jubilant measures singing in Wade’s brain. He was hurrying back, exhilarated with success, to the presence of a woman whose smile was finer exhilaration than any number of votes of confidence, passed unanimously by any number of conclaves of overjoyed Directors, and signed by Brummage after Brummage, with the signature of a capitalist in a flurry of delight at a ten per cent. dividend.

But into this joyous mood of Wade's the thought of death suddenly intruded, He could not keep a picture of death and drowning out of his mind. As the train sprang along and opened gloomy breadth after breadth of the leaden river, clogged with slow-drifting files of ice-blocks, he found himself staring across the dreary waste and forever fancying some one sinking there, helpless and alone.

He seemed to see a brave, bright-eyed, ruddy boy, venturing out carelessly along the edges of the weakened ice. Suddenly the ice gives way, the little figure sinks, rises, clutches desperately at a fragment, struggles a moment, is borne along in the relentless flow of the chilly water, stares in vain shoreward, and so sinks again with a look of agony, and is gone.

But whenever this inevitable picture grew before Wade’s eyes, as the drowning figure of his fancy vanished, it suddenly changed features, and presented the face of Mary Darner, perishing beyond succor.

Of course he knew that this was but a morbid vision. Yet that it came at all, and that it so agonized him, proved the force of his new feeling.

He had not analyzed it before. This thought of death became its touchstone.

Men like Wade, strong, healthy, earnest, concentrated, straightforward, isolated, judge men and women as friends or foes at once and once for all. He had recognized in Mary Damer from the first a heart as true, whole, noble, and healthy as his own. A fine instinct had told him that she was waiting for her hero, as he was for his heroine.

So he suddenly loved her. And yet not suddenly; for all his life, and all his lesser forgotten or discarded passions, had been training him for this master one.

He suddenly and strongly loved her; and yet it had only been a beautiful bewilderment of uncomprehended delight, until this haunting vision of her fair face sinking amid the hungry ice beset him. Then he perceived what would be lost to him, if she were lost.

The thought of Death placed itself between him and Love. If the love had been merely a pretty remembrance of a charming woman, he might have dismissed his fancied drowning scene with a little emotion of regret. Now, the fancy was an agony.

He had too much power over himself to entertain it long. But the grisly thought came uninvited, returned undesired, and no resolute Avaunt, even backed by that magic wand, a cigar, availed to banish it wholly.

The sky cleared cold at eleven o’clock. A sharp wind drew through the Highlands. As the train rattled round the curve below the tunnel through Skerrett’s Point, Wade could see his skating course of Christmas-Day with the ladies. Firm ice, glazed smooth by the sudden chill after the rain, filled the Cove and stretched beyond the Point into the river.

It was treacherous stuff, beautiful to the eyes of a skater, but sure to be weak, and likely to break up any moment and join the deliberate headlong drift of the masses in mid-current.

Wade almost dreaded lest his vision should suddenly realize itself, and he should see his enthusiastic companion of the other day sailing gracefully along to certain death.

Nothing living, however, was in sight, except here and there a crow, skipping about in the floating ice.

The lover was greatly relieved. Pie could now forewarn the lady against the peril he had imagined. The train in a moment dropped him at Dunderbunk. He hurried to the Foundry and wrote a note to Mrs. Damer.

“Mr. Wade presents his compliments to Mrs. Damer, and has the honor to inform her that Mr. Skerrett has nominated him carver to the ladies to-day in their host’s place.

“ Mr. Wade hopes that Miss Damer will excuse him from his engagement to skate with her this afternoon. The ice is dangerous, and Miss Damer should on no account venture upon it.”

Perry Purtett was the bearer of this billet. He swaggered into Peter Skerrett’s hall, and dreadfully alarmed the fresh-imported Englishman who answered the bell, by ordering him in a severe tone, —

“ Hurry up now, White Cravat, with that answer! I’m wanted down to the Works. Steam don’t bile when I’m off; and the fly-wheel will never buzz another turn, unless I’m there to motion it to move on.”

Mrs. Damer’s gracious reply informed Wade “ that she should be charmed to see him at dinner, etc., and would not fail to transmit his kind warning to Miss Damer, when she returned from her drive to make calls.”

But when Miss Damer returned in the afternoon, her mother was taking a gentle nap over the violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red stripes of a gorgeous Afghan she was knitting. The daughter heard nothing of the billet. The house was lonely without Fanny Skerrett. Mr. Wade did not come at the appointed hour. Mary was not willing to say to herself how much she regretted his absence.

Had he forgotten the appointment ?

No,—that was a thought not to be tolerated.

“ A gentleman does not forget,” she thought. And she had a thorough confidence, besides, that this gentleman was very willing to remember.

She read a little, fitfully, sang fitfully, moved about the house uneasily ; and at last, when it grew late, and she was bored and Wade did not arrive, she pronounced to herself that he had been detained in town.

This point settled, she took her skates, put on her pretty Amazonian hat with its alert feather, and went down to waste her beauty and grace on the ice, unattended and alone.

CHAPTER XI.

CAP’N AMBUSTER’S SKIFF.

IT was a busy afternoon at the Dunderbunk Foundry.

The Superintendent had come back with his pocket full of orders. Everybody, from the Czar of Russia to the President of the Guano Republic, was in the market for machinery. Crisis was gone by. Prosperity was come. The world was all ready to move, and only waited for a fresh supply of wheels, cranks, side-levers, walking-beams, and other such muscular creatures of iron, to push and tug and swing and revolve and set Progress a-going.

Dunderbunk was to have its full share in supplying the demand. It was well understood by this time that the iron Wade made was as stanch as the man who made it. Dunderbunk, therefore, Head and Hands, must despatch.

So it was a busy afternoon at the industrious Foundry. The men bestirred themselves. The furnaces rumbled. The engine thumped. The drums in the finishing-shop hummed merrily their lively song of labor. The four trip-hammers — two bull-headed, two calf-headed — champed, like carnivorous maws, upon red bars of iron, and over their banquet they roared the big-toned music of the trip-hammer chorus, —

By this massive refrain, ringing in at intervals above the ceaseless buzz, murmur, and clang throughout the buildings, every man’s work was mightily nerved and inspired. Everybody liked to hear the sturdy song of these grim vocalists; and whenever they struck in, each solo or duo or quatuor of men, playing Anvil Chorus, quickened time, and all the action and rumor of the busy opera went on more cheerily and lustily. So work kept astir like play.

An hour before sunset, Bill Tarbox stepped into Wade’s office. Even oily and begrimed, Bill could be recognized as a favored lover. He looked more a man than ever before.

“ I forgot to mention,” says the foreman, "that Cap’n Ambuster was in, this morning, to see you. He says, that, if the river’s clear enough for him to get away from our dock, he ‘ll go down to the City to-morrow, and offers to take freight cheap. We might put that new walking-beam, we ’ve just rough-finished for the ‘Union,’ aboard of him.”

“Yes, — if he is sure to go to-morrow. It will not do to delay. The owners complained to me yesterday that the ‘Union ’ was in a bad way for want of its new machinery. Tell your brotherin-law to come here, Bill.”

Tarbox looked sheepishly pleased, and summoned Perry Purtett.

“Run down, Perry,” said Wade, “ to the ‘ Ambuster,’ and ask Captain Isaac to step up here a moment. Tell him I have some freight to send by him.”

Perry moved through the Foundry with his usual jaunty step, left his dignity at the door, and ran off to the dock.

The weather had grown fitful. Heavy clouds whirled over, trailing snow-flurries. Rarely the sun found a cleft in the black canopy to shoot a ray through and remind the world that he was still in his place and ready to shine when he was wanted.

Master Perry had a furlong to go before he reached the dock. He crossed the stream, kept unfrozen by the warm influences of the Foundry. He ran through a little dell hedged on each side by dull green cedars. It was severely cold now, and our young friend condescended to prance and jump over the ice-skimmed puddles to keep his blood in motion.

The little rusty, pudgy steamboat lay at the down-stream side of the Foundry wharf. Her name was so long and her paddle-box so short, that the painter, beginning with ambitious large letters, had been compelled to abbreviate the last syllable. Her title read thus : —

I. AMBUSTer.

Certainly a formidable inscription for a steairtboat!

When she hove in sight, Perry halted, resumed his stately demeanor, and embarked as if he were a Doge entering a Bucentaur to wed a Sea.

There was nobody on deck to witness the arrival and salute the magnifico.

Perry looked in at the Cap’n’s office. He beheld a three-legged stool, a hacked desk, an inky steel-pen, an inkless inkstand; but no Cap'n Ambuster.

Perry inspected the Cap’n’s state-room. There was a cracked looking-glass, into which he looked ; a hair-brush suspended by the glass, which he used; a lair of blankets in a berth, which he had no present use for; and a smell of musty boots, which nobody with a nose could help smelling. Still no Captain Ambuster, nor any of his crew.

Search in the unsavory kitchen revealed no cook, coiled up in a corner, suffering nightmares for the last greasy dinner he had brewed in his frying-pan. There were no deck hands bundled into their bunks. Perry rapped on the chain-box and inquired if anybody was within, and nobody answering, he had to ventriloquize a negative.

The engine-room, too, was vacant, and quite as unsavory as the other dens on board. Perry patronized the engine by a pull or two at the valves, and continued his tour of inspection.

The Ambuster’s skiff, lying on her forward deck, seemed to entertain him vastly.

“ Jolly ! ” says Perry. And so it was a jolly boat in the literal, not the technical sense.

“ The three wise men of Gotham went to sea in a bowl; and here’s the identical craft,” says Perry.

He gave the chubby little machine a push with his foot. It rolled and wallowed about grotesquely. When it was still again, it looked so comic, lying contentedly on its fat side like a pudgy baby, that Perry had a roar of laughter, which, like other laughter to one’s self, did not sound very merry, particularly as the north-wind was howling ominously, and the broken ice on its downward way was whispering and moaning and talking on in a most mysterious aud inarticulate manner.

“ Those sheets of ice would crunch up this skiff, as pigs do a punkin,” thinks Perry.

And with this thought in his head he looked out on the river, and fancied the foolish little vessel cast loose and buffeting helplessly about in the ice.

He had been so busy until now, in prying about the steamboat and making up his mind that Captain and men had all gone off for a comfortable supper on shore, that his eyes had not wandered toward the stream.

Now his glance began to follow the course of the icy current. He wondered where all this supply of cakes came from, and how many of them would escape the stems of ferry-boats below and get safe to sea.

All at once, as he looked lazily along the lazy files of ice, his eyes caught a black object drifting on a fragment in a wide way of open water opposite Skerrett’s Point, a mile distant.

Perry’s heart stopped beating. He uttered a little gasping cry. He sprang ashore, not at all like a Doge quitting a Bucentaur. He tore back to the Foundry, dashing through the puddles, and, never stopping to pick up his cap, burst in upon Wade and Bill Tarbox in the office.

The boy was splashed from head to foot with red mud. His light hair, blown wildly about, made his ashy face seem paler. He stood panting.

His dumb terror brought back to Wade’s mind all the bad omens of the morning.

“ Speak! ” said he, seizing Perry fiercely by the shoulder.

The uproar of the Works seemed to hush for an instant, while the lad stammered faintly,—

“ There’s somebody carried off in the ice by Skerrett’s Point. It looks like a woman. And there’s nobody to help.”

CHAPTER XII.

IN THE ICE.

“ HELP ! help ! ” shouted the four triphammers, bursting in like a magnified echo of the boy’s last word.

“ Help! help! ” all the humming wheels and drums repeated more plaintively.

Wade made for the river.

This was the moment all his manhood had been training and saving for. For this he had kept sound and brave from his youth up.

As he ran, he felt that the only chance of instant help was in that queer little bowl-shaped skiff of the “ Ambuster.”

He had never been conscious that he had observed it ; but the image had lain latent in his mind, biding its time. It might be ten, twenty precious moments before another boat could be found. This one was on the spot to do its duty at once.

“ Somebody carried off, — perhaps a woman,” Wade thought. “Not—No, she would not neglect my warning! Whoever it is, we must save her from this dreadful death ! ”

He sprang on board the little steamboat. She was swaying uneasily at her moorings, as the ice crowded along and hammered against her stem. Wade stared from her deck down the river, with all his life at his eyes.

More than a mile away, below the hemlock-crested point, was the dark object Perry had seen, still stirring along the edges of the floating ice. A broad avenue of leaden-green water wrinkled by the cold wind separated the field where this figure was moving from the shore. Dark object and its footing of gray ice were drifting deliberately farther and farther away.

For one instant Wade thought that the terrible dread in his heart would paralyze him. But in that one moment, while his blood stopped flowing and his nerves failed, Bill Tarbox overtook him and was there by his side.

“ l brought your cap,” says Bill, “ and our two coats.”

Wade put on his cap mechanically. This little action calmed him.

“ Bill,” said he, “ I ’m afraid it is a woman, — a dear friend of mine, — a very dear friend.”

Bill, a lover, understood the tone.

“ We ’ll take care of her between us,” he said.

The two turned at once to the little tub of a boat.

Oars ? Yes, — slung under the thwarts, — a pair of short sculls, worn and split, but with work in them still. There they hung ready,— and a rusty boat-hook, besides.

“ Find the thole-pins, Bill, while I cut a plug for her bottom out of this broomstick,” Wade said.

This was done in a moment. Bill threw in the coats.

“ Now, together ! ”

They lifted the skiff to the gangway. Wade jumped down on the ice and received her carefully. They ran her along, as far as they could go, and launched her in the sludge.

“ Take the sculls, Bill. I ’ll work the boat-hook in the bow.”

Nothing more was said. They thrust out with their crazy little craft into the thick of the ice-flood. Bill, amidships, dug with his sculls in among the huddled cakes. It was clumsy pulling. Now this oar and now that would be thrown out. He could never get a full stroke.

Wade in the bow could do better. He jammed the blocks aside with his boathook. He dragged the skiff forward. He steered through the little open ways of water.

Sometimes they came to a broad sheet of solid ice. Then it was “ Out with her, Bill! ” and they were both out and sliding their bowl so quick over, that they had not time to go through the rotten surface. This was drowning business; but neither could be spared to drown yet.

In the leads of clear water, the oarsman got brave pulls and sent the boat on mightily. Then again in the thick porridge of brash ice they lost headway, or were baffled and stopped among the cakes. Slow work, slow and painful; and for many minutes they seemed to gain nothing upon the steady flow of the merciless current.

A frail craft for such a voyage, this queer little half-pumpkin ! A frail and leaky shell. She bent and cracked from stem to stern among the nipping masses. Water oozed in through her dry seams. Any moment a rougher touch or a sharper edge might cut her through. But that was a risk they had accepted. They did not take time to think of it, nor to listen to the crunching and crackling of the hungry ice around. They urged straight on, steadily, eagerly, coolly, spending and saving strength.

Not one moment to lose ! The shattering of broad sheets of ice around them was a warning of what might happen to the frail support of their chase. One thrust of the boat-hook sometimes cleft a cake that to the eye seemed stout enough to bear a heavier weight than a woman’s.

Not one moment to spare ! The dark figure, now drifted far below the hemlocks of the Point, no longer stirred. It seemed to have sunk upon the ice and to be resting there weary and helpless, on one side a wide way of lurid water, on the other half a mile of moving desolation.

Far to go, and no time to waste !

“ Give way, Bill! Give way ! ”

“ Ay, ay ! ”

Both spoke in low tones, hardly louder than the whisper of the ice around them.

By this time hundreds from the Foundry and the village were swarming upon the wharf and the steamboat.

“ A hunderd tar-barrels would n’t git up my steam in time to do any good,” says Cap’n Ambuster. “ If them two in my skiff don’t overhaul the man, he’s gone.” ■■4'

“ You ’re sure it’s a man ? ” says Smith Wheelwright.

“ Take a squint through my glass. I’m dreffully afeard it’s a gal; but suthin’ ’s got into my eye, so I can’t see.”

Suthin’ had got into the old fellow’s eye,—suthin’ saline and acrid, — namely, a tear.

“ It’s a woman,” says Wheelwright, — and suthin’ of the same kind blinded, him also.

Almost sunset now. But the air was suddenly filled with perplexing snow-dust from a heavy squall. A white curtain dropped between the anxious watchers on the wharf and the boatmen.

The same white curtain hid the dark floating object from its pursuers. There was nothing in sight to steer by, now.

Wade steered by his last glimpse,— by the current,—by the rush of the roaring wind, — by instinct.

How merciful that in such a moment a man is spared the agony of thought! His agony goes into action, intense as life.

It was bitterly cold. A swash of icewater filled the bottom of the skiff. She was low enough down without that. They could not stop to bail, and the miniature icebergs they passed began to look significantly over the gunwale. Which would come to the point of foundering first, the boat or the little floe it aimed for ?

Bitterly cold ! The snow hardly melted upon Tarbox’s bare hands. His fingers stiffened to the oars ; but there was life in them still, and still he did his work, and never turned to see how the steersman was doing his.

A flight of crows came sailing with the snow-squall. They alighted all about on the hummocks, and curiously watched the two men battling to save life. One black impish bird, more malignant or more sympathetic than his fellows, ventured to poise on the skiff's stern !

Bill hissed off this third passenger. The crow rose on its toes, let the boat slide away from under him, and followed croaking dismal good wishes.

The last sunbeams were now cutting in everywhere. The thick snow-flurry was like a luminous cloud. Suddenly it drew aside.

The industrious skiff had steered so well and made such headway, that there, a hundred yards away, safe still, not gone, thank God! was the woman they sought.

A dusky mass flung together on a waning rood of ice, — Wade could see nothing more.

Weary or benumbed, or sick with pure forlornness and despair, she had drooped down and showed no sign of life.

The great wind shook the river. Her waning rood of ice narrowed, foot by foot, like an unthrifty man’s heritage. Inch by inch its edges wore away, until the little space that half-sustained the dark heap was no bigger than a coffin-lid.

Help, now! — now, men, if you are to save! , Thrust, Richard Wade, with your boat-hook! Pull, Bill, till your oars snap ! Out with your last frenzies of vigor ! For the little raft of ice, even that has crumbled beneath its burden, and she sinks, — sinks, with succor close at hand !

Sinks! No,—she rises and floats again.

She clasps something that holds her head just above water. But the unmannerly ice has buffeted her hat off. The fragments toss it about,—that pretty Amazonian hat, with its alert feather, all drooping and draggled. Her fair hair and pure forehead are uncovered for an astonished sunbeam to alight upon.

“ It is my love, my life, Bill ! Give way, once more ! ”

“ Way enough ! Steady! Sit where you are, Bill, and trim boat, while I lift her out. We cannot risk capsizing.”

He raised her carefully, tenderly, with his strong arms.

A bit of wood had buoyed her up for that last moment. It was a broken oar with a deep fresh gash in it.

Wade knew his mark, — the cut of his own skate-iron. This busy oar was still resolved to play its part in the drama.

The round little skiff just bore the third person without sinking.

Wade laid Mary Darner against the thwart. She would not let go her buoy. He unclasped her stiffened hands. This friendly touch found its way to her heart. She opened her eyes and knew him.

“ The ice shall not carry off her hat to frighten some mother, down stream,” says Bill Tarbox, catching it.

All these proceedings Cap’n Ambuster’s spy-glass announced to Dunderbunk.

“ They ’re h’istin’ her up. They’ve slumped her into the skiff. They ’re puttin’ for shore. Hooray ! ”

Pity a spy-glass cannot shoot cheers a mile and a half!

Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half Dunderbunk along the railroadtrack to learn who it was and all about it.

All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe and not dangerously frozen, — and that Wade and Tarbox had carried her up the hill to her mother at Peter Skerrett’s.

Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a hero of Cap’n Ambuster’s skiff It was transported back on the shoulders of the crowd in triumphal procession. Perry Purtett carried round the hat for a contribution to new paint it, new rib it, new gunwale it, give it new sculls and a new boat-hook,—indeed, to make a new vessel of the brave little bowl.

“ I’m afeard,” says Cap’n Ambuster, “ that, when I git a harnsome new skiff, I shall want a harnsome new steamboat, and then the boat will go to cruisin’ round for a harnsome new Cap’n.”

And now for the end of tihs story.

Healthy love-stories always end in happy marriages.

So ends this story, begun as to its love portion by the little romance of a tumble, and continued by the bigger romance of a rescue.

Of course there were incidents enough to fill a volume, obstacles enough to fill a volume, and development of character enough to fill a tome thick as “ Webster’s Unabridged,” before the happy end of the beginning of the Wade-Damer joint history.

But we can safely take for granted that the lover being true and manly, and the lady true and womanly, and both possessed of the high moral qualities necessary to artistic skating, they will go on understanding each other better, until they are as one as two can be.

Masculine reader, attend to the moral of this tale: —

Skate well, be a hero, bravely deserve the fair, prove your deserts by your deeds, find your “ perfect woman nobly planned to warm, to comfort, and command,” catch her when found, and you are Blest.

Reader of the gentler sex, likewise attend : —

All the essential blessings of life accompany a true heart and a good complexion. Skate vigorously; then your heart will beat true, your cheeks will bloom, your appointed lover will see your beautiful soul shining through your beautiful face, he will tell you so, and after sufficient circumlocution he will Pop, you will accept, and your lives will glide sweetly as skating on virgin ice to silver music.