ates.
In the midst of the afternoon gayety a small boy, kneeling down to
buckle up to a farther hole the straps on his guttered skates, saw just
at his toe something like human hair. The small boy rose to his feet and
stamped with all his might around that object, not in any apprehension
but because small boys like to know; and when the ice had been well
broken, kneeling down and pulling it out in pieces with his mitten, the
small boy felt something cold and smooth, and then he poked his finger
into a human eye. It was a dead man. No sooner had the urchin found this
out than he bellowed out at the top of his voice, running and falling as
he yelled: "Murder! Murder! Murder!"

From all parts of the ice, like flies chasing over a silver salver
toward some sweet point of corruption, the hundreds and thousands
swarmed at the news that a dead body had been found. When they arrived
on the spot, spades, picks, and ice-hooks had been procured by those
nearest shore, and the whole mystery brought from the depths of the
river to the surface.

There lay together on the ice two men, apparently several days in the
water, and with the usual look of drowned people of good
condition--glassy and of fixed expression, as if in the moment of death
a consenting grimness had stolen into their countenances, neither
composed nor terrified.

The bodies had been already recognized when the main part of the crowd
arrived. Kensington people, generally, knew them both.

"It's William Zane and his business partner, Sayler Rainey! They own one
of the marine railways at Kensington. Come to think of it, I haven't
seen them around for nearly a week, neighbor!" exclaimed an old man.

"It's a case of drowning, no doubt," spoke up a little fellow who did a
river business in old chains and junk. "You see they had another
ship-mending place on the island opposite Kinsington, and rowin'
theirselves over was upset and never missed!"

"Quare enough too!" added a third party, "for yisterday I had a talk
with young Andrew Zane, this one's son (touching the body with his
foot), and Andrew said--a little pale I thought he was--says he, 'Pop's
_about_.'"

Here a little buzz of mystery--so grateful to crowds which have come far
over slippery surface and expect much--undulated to the outward
boundaries. As the people moved the ice cracked like a cannon shot, and
they dispersed like blackbirds, to rally soon again.

"Here's a doctor! Now we'll know about it! _