CHAPTER XX—THE SPRING FRESHET

After listening to Benjamin Hardy’s story, the hardware dealer felt less inclined than before to close up the affairs of Carolyn May’s small “estate.” Not that he for one moment believed that there was a possibility of Hannah and her husband being alive. Five months had passed. In these days of wireless telegraph and fast sea traffic such a thing could not be possible. The imagination of the practical hardware merchant could not visualise it.

Had the purser’s boat, in which the old sailor declared the Camerons were, been picked up by one of the Turkish ships, as the other refugees from the Dunraven had been rescued by the French vessel, surely news of the fact would long since have reached the papers, even had circumstances kept Mr. and Mrs. Cameron from returning home.

The Mediterranean is not the South Seas. A steam vessel could reach New York from the spot where the Dunraven had sunk in a week.

No, Mr. Stagg held no shred of belief that Hannah and her husband were not drowned.

Carolyn May did not speak of the tragedy; yet it was continually in the child’s mind. Her conversation with the sailor regarding the sufferings of drowning people only touched a single phase of the little girl’s trouble.

She was glad to be assured that her parents had not lingered in agony when they met their fate. She accepted the sailor’s statement regarding drowning quite at its par value. Nevertheless, neither this interview with Benjamin Hardy at the lumber camp nor Aunty Rose’s copious doses of boneset tea cheered the little girl. The excitement of the adventure with the lynx lasted only a few hours. Then the cloud returned to Carolyn May’s countenance and she drooped once more.

Miss Minnie noticed it. By this time the sharp-eyed young teacher looked through her spectacles very kindly at the little girl.

“What is the trouble with you, Carolyn May?” the teacher asked on one occasion. “You used to be the happiest little girl in The Corners school; and you were brightening up everybody else, too. I don’t like to see you so glum and thoughtful. It isn’t like you. What about your ‘look up’ motto, my dear? Have you forgotten it?”

“I haven’t forgotten that—oh, no, Miss Minnie. I couldn’t forget that!” the child replied. “I ’spect my papa would be ’shamed of me for losing heart so. But, oh, Miss Minnie! I do get such an empty feeling now when I think of my papa and mamma. And I think of them ’most all the time. It just does seem as though they were going farther and farther away from me ev’ry day!”

Miss Minnie took the child in her arms and kissed her.

“Faithful little soul!” she murmured. “Time will never heal heart wounds for her.”

Miss Amanda understood Carolyn May, too. When the child went to the Parlow house she found sympathy and comfort in abundance.

Not that Aunty Rose and Uncle Joe were not sympathetic; but they did not wholly understand the child’s nature. As the winter passed and Carolyn May grew more and more quiet, the hardware dealer and the woman who kept house for him decided that there was nothing the matter with Carolyn May save the natural changes incident to her growing up. For, physically, she was growing fast. As Aunty Rose said to Mr. Stagg, she was “stretching right out of her clothes.”

But Carolyn May did not always keep out of mischief, for she was a very human little girl, after all was said and done. Especially was she prone to escapades when she was in the company of Freda Payne, her black-eyed school chum.

Trouble seemed to gravitate towards Freda. Not that she was intentionally naughty, but she was too active and too full of curiosity to lead a very placid existence. Wherever Freda was the storm clouds of trouble soon gathered.

Carolyn May and Freda were playing one Saturday afternoon in the long shed that connected the blacksmith shop with Mr. Lardner’s house, and Amos Bartlett was with them.

Carolyn May did not often play with little boys. She did not much approve of them. They often played roughly and it must be confessed that their hands almost always were grubby. But she rather pitied Amos Bartlett because he had been endowed with a nose so generous that the other children laughed at him and called him “Nosey.” He snuffled, and he talked nasally, which made Carolyn May shudder sometimes, but she was brave about it when in Amos’ company.

The three were playing in Mr. Hiram Lardner’s shed, which was half storeroom and half workshop. Back in a corner the inquisitive Freda found a great cask filled with something very yellow and foamy and delicious to look at.

“Oh, molasses, I do believe!” exclaimed Freda eagerly. “Don’t you s’pose it’s molasses, Car’lyn May? I just love molasses!”

Carolyn May was fond of syrup, too; and this barrelful certainly looked like the kind Aunty Rose sometimes put on the table for the griddle cakes. The little girl liked it better than she did maple syrup.

“I believe it is molasses,” she agreed.

“Here’s a tin cup to drink it with,” put in Amos.

“O-oh! Would you dare taste it, Car’lyn May?” cried Freda.

“No. I’d rather not. Besides, it isn’t ours,” Carolyn May returned virtuously.

“But there’s so much of it,” urged Freda. “I’m sure Mr. Lardner wouldn’t care—nor Mrs. Lardner, either.”

“But—but maybe it isn’t molasses,” Carolyn May suggested.

“I bet it is m’lasses,” declared Amos with a longing look.

“You try it, Amos,” ordered Freda, handing him the cup.

“Yes,” said Carolyn May coolly. “You’re a boy, and boys don’t mind messing into things. Just taste it, Amos.”

“Go on, Amos,” added Freda. “I dare you. I double-double dare you!”

Of course, Amos, boylike, could not take a dare, so he dipped the tin cup into the yellow, foamy mass and took a good big swallow. Then the trouble began.

He dropped the cup into the barrel, where it immediately disappeared from sight, while Amos hopped about, sputtering, coughing, crying, and generally acting like a boy distracted.

“Oh, I’m pizened! I’m pizened!” he bawled. “And you girls done it! I’m—I’m goin’ to tell my mother!”

His shrieks brought Mrs. Lardner from her kitchen.

“What under the sun are you children up to?” she demanded. “Amos Bartlett, behave yourself! What is it?”

Amos could not tell her. All he could shriek was that he was “pizened.”

He burst out of the shed, ran through the shop, and so home to his mother. Carolyn May was too frightened to speak, but Freda said shakingly: “We only got him to taste the molasses.”

“What molasses?” demanded the blacksmith’s wife, startled.

“Why—why—that,” said Freda, pointing.

“My mercy me!” gasped the woman. “That soft soap that Hiram just made for me? I don’t know but the boy is poisoned.”

Mrs. Lardner rushed after Amos, to see if she could help his mother. Carolyn May and Freda crept quietly home, two frightened little girls.

But Amos was not poisoned. The doctor brought him around all right. Freda suffered an old-fashioned spanking for her part in the performance; but Aunty Rose, who did not believe in corporal punishment, did not at first know what to do to Carolyn May.

“She should be punished, Joseph Stagg,” the housekeeper said to the hardware dealer. “I’ve put her to bed early——”

“Not without her supper?” he asked in alarm, dropping his own knife and fork.

“No-o,” she admitted. “I couldn’t do that.”

Mr. Stagg chuckled. “I reckon children are children,” he observed. “I don’t know as Hannah’s Car’lyn is any different from the rest.”

“I know one thing, Joseph Stagg,” said Aunty Rose severely. “If you ever have children of your own they will be utterly spoiled.”

But Mr. Stagg still seemed amused.

“If you had anything to do with ’em, I’d have plenty of help in spoiling ’em, Aunty Rose,” he declared.

Carolyn May took the matter somewhat seriously. She tried to make it up to Amos Bartlett by lending him her sled, giving him candy when she had it, and otherwise petting him.

“For he might have been poisoned,” she stated; “and then he’d be dead, and would never grow up to fit his nose.”

Carolyn May’s acquaintance broadened constantly. She made friends wherever she went, and the wintry weather did not often keep her in the house. Uncle Joe would not hear of her going into the woods again, unless he was with her, but she could go where she pleased among the neighbours.

At Sunrise Cove there were many people who loved Carolyn May Cameron. Her most faithful knight, however, was homely, optimistic Chetwood Gormley. Mr. Stagg declared that when Chet saw “Hannah’s Car’lyn” approaching he “grinned so wide that he was like to swallow his own ears.”

And they would have been a mouthful. Even Mrs. Gormley, who could see few faults in her son, declared that Chet “wasn’t behind the door when ears were given out.”

“Chet’s got a generous nature,” the good woman said to Carolyn May one day when the latter was making the seamstress a little visit. “It don’t take his ears to show that, though they do. He’d do anything for a friend. But I don’t know as he’s ’preciated as much as he’d oughter be,” sighed Mrs. Gormley. “Mr. Stagg, even, don’t know Chet’s good parts.”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Gormley, I think Uncle Joe knows all about Chet’s ears. He couldn’t hardly miss ’em,” the little girl hastened to observe.

“Humph! I didn’t mean actual parts of his body,” Mrs. Gormley replied, eyeing the little girl over her spectacles. “I mean character. He’s a fine boy, Car’lyn May.”

“Oh! I think he is, too,” agreed the child. “And I’m sure Uncle Joe ’preciates him.”

“Well, I hope so,” sighed the seamstress. “You can’t much tell just what Mr. Joe Stagg thinks of folks. There’s him and Mandy Parlow. Somebody was tellin’ me Mr. Stagg was seen comin’ out o’ the Parlow house one day. But, shucks! that ain’t so, of course?” and she looked narrowly at her little visitor.

“Oh, I wish he would make up with Miss Amanda,” sighed Carolyn May. “She’s so nice.”

“And I guess he thought so, too—once. But you can’t tell, as I say. Mr. Joe Stagg is a man that never lets on what’s in his mind.”

Just then in burst Chet, quite unexpectedly, for it was not yet mid-afternoon.

“Oh, dear me! Mercy me!” gasped Mrs. Gormley. “What is the matter, Chetwood? Mr. Stagg hain’t let you go, has he?”

“Let me go? Well, there, mother, I wish you warn’t always expectin’ trouble,” Chet said, though smiling widely. “Why should Mr. Stagg discharge me? Why, I’m gettin’ more and more valuable to him ev’ry day—sure I am!”

“He—he ain’t said nothin’ yet about—about a partnership, has he, Chetwood?” his mother whispered hoarsely.

“My goodness, maw—no! You know that’ll take time. But it’s almost sure to come. I seen him out the other day, across the street, looking up at the sign. And I’ll bet I know what was in his mind, maw.”

“I hope so,” sighed the seamstress. “But you ain’t told us how you come to be away from the store at this hour.”

“That’s ’cause of Car’lyn May,” responded Chet, smiling at the little girl. “He let me off to take her slidin’. The ice ain’t goin’ to be safe in the cove for long now. Spring’s in the air a’ready. Both brooks are runnin’ full.”

“Oh, Chet! Can we go sliding?” cried Carolyn May. “I brought my sled!”

“Sure. Your uncle says he knowed you wanted to go down on the ice. I’ll put on my skates and draw you. We’ll have such fun!”

Carolyn May was delighted. Although the sky was overcast and a storm threatening when they got down on the ice, neither the boy nor the little girl gave the weather a second thought. Nor had Mr. Stagg considered the weather when he had allowed Chet to leave the store that afternoon. He was glad to get Chet out of the way for an hour; for, if the truth be told, he sometimes found it difficult to make any use of young Gormley at all.

“I might as well lock up the store when I go home to dinner and supper,” Mr. Stagg sometimes observed to himself. “If the critter sells anything, it’s usually at the wrong price. He wants to sell wire nails by the dozen and brass hinges by the pound. I dunno what I keep him for, unless it’s for the good of my soul. Chet Gormley does help a feller to cultivate patience!”

Fortunately, for the peace of mind of Chet and his widowed mother, they did not suspect the hardware dealer of holding this opinion. Just now the boy was delighted to lend himself to Carolyn May’s pleasure. He strapped on his skates, and then settled the little girl firmly on her sled. She sat forward, and he lifted Prince up behind her, where the dog sat quite securely, with his forepaws over his mistress’ shoulders, his jaws agape, and his tongue hanging out like a moist, red necktie.

“He’s laughin—just as broad as he can laugh, Car’lyn May,” chuckled Chet. “All ready, now?”

“Oh, we’re all right, Chet,” the little girl cried gaily.

The boy harnessed himself with the long tow-rope and skated away from the shore, dragging the sled after him at a brisk pace. Chet was a fine skater, and although the surface of the ice was rather spongy he had no difficulty in making good time towards the mouth of the cove.

“Oh, my!” squealed Carolyn May, “there isn’t anybody else on the ice.”

“We won’t run into nobody, then,” laughed the boy.

There were schooners and barges and several steam craft tied up at the docks. These had been frozen in all winter. They would soon be free, and lake traffic would begin again.

It was too misty outside the cove to see the open water; but it was there, and Chet knew it as well as anybody. He had no intention of taking any risks—especially with Carolyn May in his charge.

The wind blew out of the cove, too. As they drew away from the shelter of the land they felt its strength. It was not a frosty wind. Indeed, the temperature was rising rapidly, and, as Chet had said, there was a hint of spring in the air.

Naturally, neither the boy nor the little girl—and surely not the dog—looked back towards the land. Otherwise, they would have seen the snow flurry that swept down over the town and quickly hid it from the cove.

Chet was skating his very swiftest. Carolyn May was screaming with delight. Prince barked joyfully. And, suddenly, in a startling fashion, they came to a fissure in the ice!

The boy darted to one side, heeled on his right skate, and stopped. He had jerked the sled aside, too, yelling to Carolyn May to “hold fast!” But Prince was flung from it, and scrambled over the ice, barking loudly.

“Oh, dear me!” cried Carolyn May. “You stopped too quick, Chet Gormley. Goodness! There’s a hole in the ice!”

“And I didn’t see it till we was almost in it,” acknowledged Chet. “It’s more’n a hole. Why! there’s a great field of ice broke off and sailin’ out into the lake.”

“Oh, my!” gasped the little girl, awed, “isn’t that great, Chet?”

“It’s great that we didn’t get caught on it,” muttered Chet, deeply impressed by the peril.

“We can’t go any farther, can we?” she asked.

“Nope. Got to turn back. Why, hullo! it’s snowin’!”

“Dear me! and we didn’t bring any umbrella,” observed Carolyn May.

“You call Prince. I guess we’d better get back,” Chet said more seriously. “We’re three miles from town, if we’re an inch.”

“And we can’t see the town or the boats or the docks! Oh, Chet! isn’t this fun? I never was out in a snowstorm on the ice before.”

The snow was damp and clung to their clothing. Chet saw that it was going to clog his skates, too. He would not let the child see that he was worried; but the situation was no ordinary one.

In the first place, it was hard to tell the points of the compass in the snowstorm. Prince might be able to smell his way back to land; but Chet Gormley was not endowed with the same sense of smell that Prince possessed.

The boy knew at once that he must be careful in making his way home with the little girl. Having seen one great fissure in the ice, he might come upon another. It seemed to him as though the ice under his feet was in motion. In the distance was the sound of a reverberating crash that could mean but one thing. The ice in the cove was breaking up!

The waters of the two brooks were pouring down into the cove. This swelling flood lifted the great sheet of spongy ice and set it in motion. Everywhere at the head of the cove the ice was cracking and breaking up. The wind helped. Spring had really come, and the annual freshet was likely now to force the ice entirely out of the cove and open the way for traffic in a few hours.

CHAPTER XXI—THE CHAPEL BELL

“Hum! If that Chet Gormley were here now, he might be of some use for once,” thought Mr. Stagg. “But, of course, he never is here when I want him. He could clean this walk before folks get all balled up walking on it.”

Suddenly he bethought him of the errand that had taken the boy away from the store. Not at once was the hardware merchant startled by the thought; but he cast a critical glance skyward, trying to measure the downfall of snow.

“He’ll be coming back—with Hannah’s Car’lyn. Of course, he isn’t rattle-brained enough to take her out on the ice when it’s snowing like this.”

“Hey, Stagg!” shouted a shopkeeper from over the way, who had likewise come to the door, “did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” asked Joseph Stagg, puzzled.

“There she goes again! That’s ice, old man. She’s breaking up. We’ll have spring with us in no time now. I told Scofield this morning he could begin to load that schooner of his. The ice is going out of the cove.”

The reverberating crash that had startled Chet Gormley had startled Joseph Stagg as well.

“My goodness!” gasped the hardware dealer, and he started instantly away from the store, bareheaded as he was, without locking the door behind him—something he had never done before, since he had established himself in business on the main street of Sunrise Cove.

Just why he ran he could scarcely have explained. Of course, the children had not gone out in this snowstorm! Mrs. Gormley—little sense as he believed the seamstress possessed—would not have allowed them to venture.

Yet, why had Chet not returned? Mr. Stagg knew very well that the ungainly boy was no shirk. Having been sent home for the particular purpose of taking Carolyn May out on her sled, he would have done that, or returned immediately to the store. Although prone to find fault with Chet Gormley, the hardware dealer recognised his good qualities as certainly as anybody did.

He quickened his pace. He was running—slipping and sliding over the wet snow—when he turned into the street on which his store boy and his widowed mother lived.

The cottage was a little, boxlike place, and one had to climb steps to get to it. Mrs. Gormley saw him coming from the windows of the tiny front room which served her as parlour and workroom combined. The seamstress tottered to the door and opened it wide, clinging to it for support.

“Oh, oh, Mr. Stagg! What’s happened now?” she gasped. “I hope poor Chet ain’t done nothin’ that he shouldn’t ha’ done. I’m sure he tries to do his very best. If he’s done anything——”

“Where is he?” Joseph Stagg managed to say. “Where—where is he?” repeated the widow. “Oh, do come in, Mr. Stagg. It’s snowin’, ain’t it?”

Mr. Stagg plunged into the little house, head down, and belligerent.

“Where’s that plagued boy?” he demanded again. “Don’t tell me he’s taken Hannah’s Car’lyn out on the cove in this storm!”

“But—but you told him he could!” wailed the widow.

“What if I did? I didn’t know ’twas going to snow like this, did I?”

“But it wasn’t snowin’ when they went,” said Mrs. Gormley, plucking up some little spirit. “I’m sure it wasn’t Chetwood’s fault. Oh, dear!”

“Woman,” groaned Joseph Stagg, “it doesn’t matter whose fault it is—or if it’s anybody’s fault. The mischief’s done. The ice is breaking up. It’s drifting out of the inlet. You can hear it—if you’d stop talking long enough.” This was rather unfair on Mr. Stagg’s part, for he was certainly doing more talking than anybody else.

Just at this moment an unexpected voice broke into the discussion. There was a second woman—she had been sitting by the window—in Mrs. Gormley’s front room.

“Are you positive they went out on the cove to slide, Mrs. Gormley?”

“Oh, yes, I be, Mandy,” answered the seamstress. “Chet said he was goin’ there, and what Chet says he’ll do, he always does.”

“Then the ice has broken away and they have been carried out into the lake,” groaned Mr. Stagg.

Mandy Parlow came quickly to the little hall.

“Perhaps not, Joseph,” she said, speaking directly to the hardware dealer. “It may be the storm. It snows so fast they would easily get turned around—be unable to find the shore.”

Another reverberating crash echoed from the cove. Mrs. Gormley wrung her hands.

“Oh, my Chet! Oh, my Chet!” she wailed. “He’ll be drowned!”

“He won’t be, if he’s got any sense,” snapped Mr. Stagg. “I’ll get some men and we’ll go after them.”

“Call the dog, Joseph Stagg. Call the dog,” advised Miss Amanda.

“Heh? Didn’t Prince go with ’em?”

“Oh, yes, he did,” wailed Mrs. Gormley.

“Call the dog, just the same,” repeated Amanda Parlow. “Prince will hear you and bark.”

“God bless you! So he will,” cried Mr. Stagg. “You’ve got more sense than any of us, Mandy.”

“And I’ll have the chapel bell rung,” she said.

“Huh! what’s that for?”

“The wind will carry the sound out across the cove. That boy, Chet, will recognise the sound of the bell and it will give him an idea of where home is.”

“You do beat all!” exclaimed Joseph Stagg, starting to leave the house.

But Amanda stayed him for a moment.

“Find a cap of Chet’s, Mrs. Gormley,” she commanded. “Don’t you see Mr. Stagg has no hat? He’ll catch his death of cold.”

“Why, I never thought!” He turned to speak directly to Miss Amanda, but she had gone back into the room and was putting on her outer wraps. Mrs. Gormley, red-eyed and weeping, brought the cap.

“Don’t—don’t be too hard on poor Chet, sir,” she sobbed. “He ain’t to blame.”

“Of course he isn’t,” admitted the hardware dealer heartily. “And I’m sure he’ll look out for Hannah’s Car’lyn—he and the dog.”

He plunged down the steps and kept on down the hill to the waterfront. There was an eating-place here where the waterside characters congregated, and Mr. Stagg put his head in at the door.

“Some of you fellers come out with me on the ice and look for a little girl—and a boy and a dog,” said Mr. Stagg. “Like enough, they’re lost in this storm. And the ice is going out.”

“I seen ’em when they went down,” said one man, jumping up with alacrity. “Haven’t they come back yet?”

“No.”

“Snow come down and blinded ’em,” said another.

“Do you reckon the spring freshet’s re’lly due yet?” propounded a third man.

“Don’t matter whether she be or not, Rightchild,” growled one of the other men. “The kids ought to be home, ’stead o’ out on that punky ice.”

They all rushed out of the eating-house and down to the nearest dock. Even the cook went, for he chanced to know Carolyn May.

“And let me tell you, she’s one rare little kid,” he declared, out of Mr. Stagg’s hearing. “How she come to be related to that hard-as-nails Joe Stagg is a puzzler.”

The hardware dealer might deserve this title in ordinary times, but this was one occasion when he plainly displayed emotion.

Hannah’s Car’lyn, the little child he had learned to love, was somewhere on the ice in the driving storm. He would have rushed blindly out on the rotten ice, barehanded and alone, had the others not halted him.

“Hold on! We want a peavy or two—them’s the best tools,” said one of the men.

“And a couple of lanterns,” said another.

Joseph Stagg stood on the dock and shouted at the top of his voice:

“Prince! Prince! Prince!”

The wind must have carried his voice a long way out across the cove, but there was no reply.

Then, suddenly, the clear silver tone of a bell rang out. Its pitch carried through the storm startlingly clear.

“Hullo! what’s the chapel bell tolling for?” demanded the man who had suggested the lanterns.

“The boy will hear that!” cried another. “If he isn’t an idiot, he’ll follow the sound of the chapel bell.”

“Ya-as,” said the cook, “if the ice ain’t opened up ’twixt him an’ the shore.”

There was a movement out in the cove. One field of ice crashed against another. Mr. Stagg stifled a moan and was one of the first to climb down to the level of the ice.

“Have a care, Joe,” somebody warned him. “This snow on the ice will mask the holes and fissures something scandalous.”

But Joseph Stagg was reckless of his own safety. He started out into the snow, shouting again:

“Prince! Prince! Here, boy! Here, boy!”

There was no answering bark. The ice cracked and shuddered and the gale slapped the snow against the searchers more fiercely than before. Had they been facing the wind, the snow would fairly have blinded them.

“And that’s what’s happened to the boy,” declared one of the men. “Don’t you see? He’s got to face it to get back to town.”

“Then he is drifted with it,” said Mr. Stagg hopelessly.

“Say, he’ll know which is the right way! Hear that bell?” rejoined another. “You can hear the chapel bell when you’re beating into the cove with the wind dead against you. I know, for I’ve been there.”

“Me, too,” agreed another.

The clanging of the chapel bell was a comforting sound. Joseph Stagg did not know that, unable to find the sexton, Amanda Parlow had forced the church door and was tugging at the rough rope herself.

Back and forth she rang the iron clapper, and it was no uncertain note that clanged across the storm-driven cove that afternoon. It was not work to which Carolyn May’s “pretty lady” was used. Her shoulders soon ached and the palms of her hands were raw and bleeding. But she continued to toll the bell without a moment’s surcease.

She did not know how much that resonant sound might mean to those out on the ice—to the little girl and the boy who might have no other means of locating the shore, to the men who were searching for the lost ones; for they, too, might be lost in the storm.

The axle of the old bell groaned and shrieked at each revolution. Miss Amanda pulled on the rope desperately. She did not think to put her foot in the loop of the rope to aid her in this work. With the power of her arms and shoulders alone she brought the music from the throat of the bell. Every stroke was a shock that racked her body terribly. She dared not leave the rope for a minute while she called from the door for help.

She hoped the sexton would come, wondering who was so steadily pulling the bell rope. Stroke followed stroke. The axle shrieked—and she could have done the same with pain had she not set her teeth in her lip and put forth every atom of will power she possessed to keep to the work and stifle her agony.

On and on, till her brain swam, and her breath came chokingly from her lungs. Once she missed the stroke, her strength seeming to desert her for the moment. Frantically she clawed at the rope again and pulled down on it with renewed desperation.

“I will! I will!” she gasped.

Why? For the sake of the little child that she, too, had learned to love?

Perhaps. And, yet, it was not the flowerlike face of little Carolyn May that Amanda Parlow saw continually before her eyes as she tugged on the bell rope with bleeding hands.

Going out into the storm, out on the treacherous ice, was a figure that she had watched during the long years from behind the curtains of her front room. It was the most familiar figure in the world to her.

She had seen it change from a youthful, willowy shape to a solid, substantial, middle-aged figure during these years. She had seen it aging before its time. No wonder she could visualise it now so plainly out there on the ice.

“Joe! Joe!” she muttered each time that she bore down on the bell rope, and the iron tongue shouted the word for her, far across the snow-blotted cove.

CHAPTER XXII—CHET GORMLEY’S AMBITION

He had quickly realised that they were in peril, but he would not let Carolyn May see that he was frightened—no, indeed! But he had to give up trying to make Prince sit on the sled.

“He’ll just have to run. He can do it in this snow,” said Chet. “I declare! he can get along better than I can. I guess I’d better take off my skates.”

“I’ll hold ’em for you, Chet,” Carolyn May cried, laughing. “My! doesn’t this snow slap you hard?”

The boy unstrapped the skates swiftly. He had a very good reason for removing them. If the ice was breaking up into floes, he might skate right off into the water, being unable to halt quickly enough, if on the steel runners.

He now plodded on, head down, dragging the sled and the child, with Prince slipping and scratching along beside them.

Suddenly he came to open water. It was so broad a channel that he could not hope to leap it; and, of course, he could not get the sled and the little girl across.

“My!” cried Carolyn May, “that place wasn’t here when we came out, was it, Chet? It must have just come here.”

“I don’t think it was here before,” admitted the boy.

“Or maybe you’re not going back the way you came?” suggested the little girl. “Are you sure you’re going the right way home?”

Chet really was doubtful of his direction. He believed that the wind was blowing directly down the cove, but it might have shifted. The thickly falling snow blinded and confused him.

Suddenly a sound reached their ears that startled both; it even made Prince prick up his ears and listen. Then the dog sat up on his haunches and began to howl.

“Oh, don’t, Prince!” gasped Carolyn May. “Who ever told you you could sing, just because you hear a church bell ringing?”

“That’s the chapel bell!” cried Chet Gormley. “Now I’m sure I’m right. But we must get around this open patch of water.”

He set off along the edge of the open water, which looked black and angry. The ice groaned and cracked in a threatening way. He was not sure whether the floe they were on had completely broken away from the great mass of ice in the cove and was already drifting out into the lake or not.

Haste, however, he knew was imperative. The tolling of the chapel bell coming faintly down the wind, Chet drew the sled swiftly along the edge of the opening, the dog trotting along beside them, whining. Prince plainly did not approve of this.

“Here it is!” shouted the boy in sudden joy. “Now we’ll be all right, Car’lyn May!”

“Oh, I’m so glad, Chet,” said the little girl. “For I’m getting real cold, and this snow makes me all wet.”

Chet was tempted to take off his coat and put it about her. But the coat was thin, and he felt that it was already soaked through. It would not do her any material good.

“Keep up your heart, Car’lyn May,” he begged. “I guess we’ll get through all right now.”

“Oh, I’m not really afraid,” the little girl answered. “Only I’d really like to be on shore.”

Chet would have liked to be on shore at that very moment himself. He swiftly drew the sled around the upper end of the open piece of water. The ice was “bucking” under his feet, and scarcely had they got away from the water when the crack extended clear across the cove and the floe drifted away.

“Hurrah!” shouted the boy, his courage rising again. “We’re well rid of that old place.”

“Oh, isn’t it good that we got away from there?” Carolyn May remarked. “Why! we might have drifted right out into the middle of the lake and been home too late for supper.”

Chet had no rejoinder to make to this. He realised that the entire surface of the cove ice was breaking up. Again and again the shattering sounds announced the splitting of the ice floes. He hastened on towards the sound of the tolling bell, sharply on the watch for other breaks in the ice.

Here was another—a wide-spreading crevasse filled with black water. Chet had no idea to which direction he should turn. And, indeed, it seemed to him as though the opening was growing wider each moment. The ice on which they stood must be completely severed from that further up in the inlet!

The boy had become frightened. Carolyn May had little idea of their danger. Prince sat up and howled. It seemed to the boy as though they were in desperate straits, indeed.

“You’ve got to be a brave girl, Car’lyn May,” he said. “I’m goin’ to swim across this place and then drag you over. You stick to the sled and you won’t scarcely get wet even.”

“Oh, Chet! but you’ll get wet!” she cried. “And your mother’ll punish you, Chet Gormley!”

“Oh, no, she won’t,” replied the boy, with a hysterical laugh. “Don’t you fear. Now, sit right still.”

He had untied one end of the sled rope and looped it around his wrist. The open water was not more than eight feet across. He knew it was going to be an exceedingly cold plunge, but he saw no other way of overcoming the difficulty.

Prince began to bark madly when the boy sat down and thrust his legs into the black water. The chill of it almost took Chet’s breath away when he finally slid down, shoulder deep, into the flood.

“Oh, Chet! don’t you dare get drownd-ed!” begged Carolyn May, terrified now by the situation.

He turned a bright face on her as he struck out for the edge of the other ice floe. Chet might not have been the wisest boy who ever lived, but he was brave, in the very best sense of the word.

“Don’t worry about me, Car’lyn May,” he chattered.

The desperate chill of the water almost stopped the boy’s heart. The shock of this plunge into the icy depths was sufficient to kill a weak person. But Chet Gormley had plenty of reserve strength, whether he was noted for good sense or not.

Almost anybody in his situation would have remained on the ice and hoped for help from shore; but it never entered Chet’s mind that he could expect anybody else to save Carolyn May but himself. She was in his care, and Chet believed it was up to him to get her safely ashore, and that in as quick time as possible.

Three strokes took him across the patch of open water. He hooked his arms over the edge of the ice to his elbows, took breath for a moment, and then dragged his long frame up on the bobbing, uncertain field.

It was a mighty struggle. Chet’s saturated garments and his boots filled with water weighed him down like lead. But he accomplished it at last. He was safely on the ice. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the child on the sled in the snowstorm and the dog beside her.

“Well be all right in a minute, Car’lyn May!” he called, climbing to his feet.

And then he discovered something that almost stunned him. The line he had looped around his wrist had slipped off! He had no way of reaching the rope attached to the sled save by crossing back through the water.

Chet felt that he could not do it.

“Oh, Chet! Chet!” wailed Carolyn May, “you’ve dropped my rope!”

The end of it hung in the water. The child, of course, could not throw it across to him. The boy was stricken dumb and motionless. That is, he was motionless, save for the trembling of his limbs and the chattering of his teeth. The chill of the water had struck through, it seemed, to the very marrow of his bones.

What he should do, poor Chet could not think. His brain seemed completely clouded. And he was so cold and helpless that there was not much he could do, anyway.

His clothing was stiffening on his frame. The snow beat against his back, and he could scarcely stand. The space was growing wider between the edge of the ice where he stood and that edge where Carolyn May and the dog were.

But what was the little girl doing? He saw her hauling in on the wet rope, and she seemed to be speaking to Prince, for he stood directly before her, his ears erect, his tail agitated. By-and-by he barked sharply.

“Now, Princey!” Chet heard her cry.

She thrust the end of the rope into the dog’s jaws and waved her mittened hand towards the open water and the unhappy Chet beyond it.

Prince sprang around, faced the strait of black water, shaking the end of the rope vigorously. Chet saw what she meant, and he shrieked to the dog:

“Come on, Prince! Come on, good dog! Here, sir!”

Prince could not bark his reply with the rope in his jaws, but he sprang into the water, and swam sturdily towards Chet.

“Come on, you good dog!” yelled Chet, half-crying and half-laughing. “You have the pep, you have, Prince! Come on!”

He stooped and seized the dog’s forelegs when he came near and helped him scramble out on the ice. The end of the rope was safely in his grasp again.

“My goodness! My goodness! I could sing a hallelujah!” declared Chet, his eyes streaming now. “Hold on, now, Car’lyn May! I’m goin’ to drag you across. You hang right on to that sled.”

“Oh, I’ll cling to it, Chet,” declared the little girl. “And do take me off this ice, quick, for I think it’s floating out with me.”

Chet drew on the rope, the sled moved forward and plunged, with just a little splash, into the pool. Prince barked desperately as his little mistress screamed.

“Oh, I’m getting wet, Chet!” she shrieked.

“Hold hard!” yelled Chet in return. “You won’t get very wet.”

In a few seconds he had “snaked” the sled to the edge of the ice floe on which he stood. He picked the sobbing Carolyn May off the sled and then lifted that up, too. The little girl was wet below her waist.

“I’m—I’m just as co—cold as I—I can be,” she chattered. “Oh, Chet! take me home please!”

“I’m a-going to,” chattered the lad in return.

He dragged off his coat now, wrung it as dry as he could, and wrapped it around Carolyn May’s legs before he seated her on the sled again. Then he seized the rope once more and started towards the sound of the chapel bell.

How glad he was that the bell still sounded! He was sure of that—and it was the only thing he was sure of.

He could only stagger on, now, for his feet were very heavy, and he felt as though he should fall at any moment. And if he did fall he was quite sure he would not be able to get up again.

Chet knew he could not face Mr. Stagg if anything really bad happened to “Hannah’s Car’lyn.” All his hopes of advancement and ultimate success would be swept away, too, if this adventure ended in tragedy.

Foolish as perhaps the boy’s longings and hopes were, the mark he had set himself to gain was very real, indeed, to Chet Gormley. He hoped some day to see that sign, “Stagg & Gormley,” over the hardware store door. If for no other reason than that, he would not give up now.

The chapel bell tolled on. The sleet beat in his face stingingly. He panted and staggered, but persevered.

“I’ll show him,” murmured Chet. “I won’t give up! Poor little kid—I guess not! I’ll get her home——”

Prince began to bark. He could not move forward much faster than Chet did; but he faced to the right and began to bark with persistence.

“There—there’s something over there, Chet,” murmured Carolyn May. She was all but breathless herself.

Then, through the wind and the storm, came a faint hail. Prince eagerly pursued his barking. Chet tried to reply to the hail, but his voice was only a hoarse croak.

“We’ve got to keep on—we’ve got to keep on,” muttered the lad, dragging the sled slowly.

His submersion in the icy water had been a serious matter. His limbs were too heavy, it seemed, for further progress. He scarcely knew now what he was doing—only the tolling of the chapel bell seemed to draw him on—and on—and on——

The dog had disappeared. Carolyn May was weeping frankly. Chet Gormley was pushing slowly through the storm, staggering at each step, scarcely aware in what direction he was heading.

CHAPTER XXIII—HOW TO WRITE A SERMON

The men with Mr. Stagg having spread out on the ice like a skirmishing party, now closed in towards the point from which sounded the dog’s barking. The hardware dealer shouted as he ran. He was the most reckless of them all, and on several occasions came near to falling. The snow over the ice made the footing treacherous, indeed.

Suddenly an object appeared in the smother of falling snow. Hoarsely the dog barked again. Mr. Stagg shouted:

“Hey, Prince! Prince! Here we are!”

The mongrel made for the hardware merchant and almost knocked him over. He was mad with joy. He barked and whined and leaped upon the man; and the sight of Joseph Stagg down on his knees in the snow trying to hug the wriggling dog was certainly one to startle his neighbours.

“Show ’em to us, good dog!” cried Uncle Joe. “Take us to ’em! Where’s Hannah’s Car’lyn? Show us, boy!”

“That dog’s a good un,” declared Rightchild.

“Now you’ve said something,” agreed the eating-house cook.

Prince lapped Mr. Stagg’s face and then ran off through the falling snow, barking and leaping. The men hurried after him. Twice or thrice the dog was back, to make sure that he was followed. Then the men saw something outlined in the driving snow.

“Uncle Joe! Uncle Joe!”

The child’s shrill voice reached the hardware merchant. There was poor Chet, staggering on, leaning against the wind, and pulling the sled behind him.

“Well, you silly chump!” growled Joseph Stagg. “Where’re you going, anyway?”

“Oh, Uncle Joe!” wailed Carolyn May, “he isn’t anything like that, at all! He’s just the very bravest boy! And he’s all wet and cold.”

At the conclusion of this declaration poor Chet fell to his knees, and then slipped quietly forward on his face.

“I vum!” grunted the hardware dealer, “I guess the boy is all in.”

But Chet did not lose consciousness. He raised a faint murmur which reached Mr. Stagg’s ears.

“I—I did the best I could, Mr. Stagg. Take—take her right up to mother. She’ll fix Car’lyn up, all right.”

“Say, kid!” exclaimed the cook, “I guess you need a bit of fixin’ up yourself. Why, see here, boys, this chap’s been in the water and his clothes is froze stiff.”

“Pick him up and put him on the sled here, boys,” Mr. Stagg said. “I’ll carry Hannah’s Car’lyn myself.”

The party, including the excited Prince, got back to the docks without losing any time and without further accident. Still the chapel bell was ringing, and somebody said:

“We’d have been up a stump for knowing the direction, if it hadn’t been for that bell.”

“Me, too,” muttered Chet Gormley. “That’s what kep’ me goin’, folks—the chapel bell. It just seemed to be callin’ me home.”

Joseph Stagg carried his niece up to Mrs. Gormley’s little house, while Rightchild helped Chet along to the same destination. The seamstress met them at the door, wildly excited.

“And what do you think?” she cried. “They took Mandy Parlow home in Tim’s hack. She was just done up, they tell me, pullin’ that chapel bell. Did you ever hear of such a silly critter—just because she couldn’t find the sexton!”

“Hum! you and I both seem to be mistaken about what constitutes silliness, Mrs. Gormley,” grumbled the hardware dealer. “I was for calling your Chet silly, till I learned what he’d done. And you’d better not call Miss Mandy silly. The sound of the chapel bell gave us all our bearings. Both of ’em, Chet and Miss Mandy, did their best.”

Carolyn May was taken home in Tim’s hack, too. To her surprise, Tim was ordered to stop at the Parlow house and go in to ask how Miss Amanda was.

By this time the story of her pulling of the chapel-bell rope was all over Sunrise Cove, and the hack driver was, naturally, as curious as anybody. So he willingly went into the Parlow cottage, bringing back word that she was resting comfortably, Dr. Nugent having just left her.

“An’ she’s one brave gal,” declared Tim. “Pitcher of George Washington! pullin’ that bell rope ain’t no baby’s job.”

Carolyn May did not altogether understand what Miss Amanda had done, but she was greatly pleased that Uncle Joe had so plainly displayed his interest in the carpenter’s daughter. On this particular occasion, however, she was so sleepy that she was lifted out of the hack when they reached home by Uncle Joe, who carried her into the house in his arms.

When Aunty Rose heard the outline of the story she bustled about at once to get the little girl to bed. She sat up in bed and had her supper, with Prince sitting close beside her on the floor and Aunty Rose watching her as though she felt that something of an exciting nature might happen at any moment to the little girl.

“I never did see such a child—I never did!” Aunty Rose repeated.

The next morning Carolyn May seemed to be in good condition. Indeed, she was the only individual vitally interested in the adventure who did not pay for the exposure. Even Prince had barked his legs being hauled out on to the ice. Uncle Joe had caught a bad cold in his head and suffered from it for some time. Miss Amanda remained in bed for several days. But it was poor Chet Gormley who paid the dearest price for participation in the exciting incident. Dr. Nugent had hard work fighting off pneumonia.

Mr. Stagg surprised himself by the interest he took in Chet. He closed his store twice each day to call at the Widow Gormley’s house. The seamstress was so delighted with this attention on the hardware merchant’s part that she was willing to accept at its face value Chet’s hope and expectation that some day the sign over the store door would read, “Stagg & Gormley.”

It was a fact that Mr. Stagg found himself talking with Chet more than he ever had before. The boy was lonely, and the man found a spark of interest in his heart for him that he had never previously discovered. He began to probe into his young employee’s thoughts, to learn something of his outlook on life; perhaps, even, he got some inkling of Chet’s ambition.

That week the ice went entirely out of the cove. Spring was at hand, with its muddy roads, blue skies, sweeter airs, soft rains, and a general revivifying feeling.

Aunty Rose declared that Carolyn May began at once to “perk up.” Perhaps the cold, long winter had been hard for the child to bear. At least, being able to run out of doors without stopping to bundle up was a delight.

One day the little girl had a more than ordinarily hard school task to perform. Everything did not come easy to Carolyn May, “by any manner of means,” as Aunty Rose would have said. Composition writing was her bane, and Miss Minnie had instructed all Carolyn May’s class to bring in a written exercise the next morning. The little girl wandered over to the churchyard with her slate and pencil—and Prince, of course—to try to achieve the composition.

The earth was dry and warm and the grass was springing freshly. A soft wind blew from the south and brought with it the scent of growing things.

The windows of the minister’s study overlooked this spot, and he was sitting at his desk while Carolyn May was laboriously writing the words on her slate (having learned to use a slate) which she expected later to copy into her composition book.

The Reverend Afton Driggs watched her puzzled face and labouring fingers for some moments before calling out of the window to her. Several sheets of sermon paper lay before him on the desk, and perhaps he was having almost as hard a time putting on the paper what he desired to say as Carolyn May was having with her writing.

Finally, he came to the window and spoke to her.

“Carolyn May,” he said, “what are you writing?”

“Oh, Mr. Driggs, is that you?” said the little girl, getting up quickly and coming nearer. “Did you ever have to write a composition?”

“Yes, Carolyn May, I have to write one or two each week.” And he sighed.

“Oh yes! So you do!” the little girl agreed. “You have to write sermons. And that must be a terribly tedious thing to do, for they have to be longer than my composition—a great deal longer.”

“So it is a composition that is troubling you,” the minister remarked.

“Yes, sir. I don’t know what to write—I really don’t. Miss Minnie says for us not to try any flights of fancy. I don’t just know what those are. But she says, write what is in us. Now, that don’t seem like a composition,” added Carolyn May doubtfully.

“What doesn’t?”

“Why, writing what is in us,” explained the little girl, staring in a puzzled fashion at her slate, on which she had written several lines. “You see, I have written down all the things that I ’member is in me.”

“For pity’s sake! let me see it, child,” said the minister, quickly reaching down for the slate. When he brought it to a level with his eyes he was amazed by the following:

“In me there is my heart, my liver, my lungs, my verform pendicks, my stummick, two ginger cookies, a piece of pepmint candy, and my dinner.”

“For pity’s sake!” Mr. Driggs shut off this explosion by a sudden cough.

“I guess it isn’t much of a composition, Mr. Driggs,” Carolyn May said frankly. “But how can you make your inwards be pleasant reading?”

The minister was having no little difficulty in restraining his mirth.

“Go around to the door, Carolyn May, and ask Mrs. Driggs to let you in. Perhaps I can help you in this composition writing.”

“Oh, will you, Mr. Driggs?” cried the little girl. “That is awful kind of you.”

The minister must have confided in his wife before she came to the door to let Carolyn May in, for she was laughing heartily.

“You funny little thing!” cried Mrs. Driggs, catching her up in her arms. “Mr. Driggs says he is waiting for you—and this sermon day, too! Go into his study.”

The clergyman did not seem to mind neglecting his task for the pleasure of helping Carolyn May with hers. Be explained quite clearly just what Miss Minnie meant by “writing what is in you.”

“Oh! It’s what you think about a thing yourself—not what other folks think,” cried Carolyn May. “Why, I can do that. I thought it was something like those physerology lessons. Then I can write about anything I want to, can’t I?”

“I think so,” replied the minister.

“I’m awfully obliged to you, Mr. Driggs,” the little girl said. “I wish I might do something for you in return.”

“Help me with my sermon, perhaps?” he asked, smiling.

“I would if I could, Mr. Driggs.” Carolyn May was very earnest.

“Well, now, Carolyn May, how would you go about writing a sermon, if you had one to write?”

“Oh, Mr. Driggs!” exclaimed the little girl, clasping her hands. “I know just how I’d do it.”

“You do? Tell me how, then, my dear,” he returned, smiling. “Perhaps you have an inspiration for writing sermons that I have never yet found.”

“Why, Mr. Driggs, I’d try to write every word so’s to make folks that heard it happier. That’s what I’d do. I’d make ’em look up and see the sunshine and the sky—and the mountains, ’way off yonder—so they’d see nothing but bright things and breathe only good air and hear birds sing—Oh, dear me, that—that is the way I’d write a sermon.”

The clergyman’s face had grown grave as he listened to her, but he kissed her warmly as he thanked her and bade her good-bye. When she had gone from the study he read again the text written at the top of the first sheet of sermon paper. It was taken from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah.

“‘To write every word so’s to make folks that heard it happier,’” he murmured as he crumpled the sheet of paper in his hand and dropped it in the waste-basket.