of wind-jacket, the ski-runner's belted jacket
of thin and trusty silk, defend, like a faithful wing--a warm, conscious
wing--the upper part of her body.

The deadly water was encroaching, clasping her waist with an icy
girdle,--stealing under it, even to her armpits.

And the petrifying little hand which had left its fistling in the
train,--the thick mitten that should have grasped the balancing stick in
all the wild swallow-fun of climbing, stemming, darting amid slope and
snow upon a wintry hillside--could not hold on very long to the glacial
spur.

The ice-cake was threatening to slip away, to seesaw, turn turtle and
waltz off, to the tune of blood-curdling sounds: screams for help here,
there, everywhere, always with the background of that menacing hiss of
steam in the great engine's boilers--that low, sneezing uz-z-z! as if it
were taking cold from its bath--the engine that, at any moment, might
explode.

Frantically she would have struck out, the little girl-mechanic, and
fought the whole ice-pack to get away from that threat, to reach a solid
crust, but she knew that she could not "swim" two, herself and Una.

Yet would they go under--one or both--perish in water not deep because
of the starving cold, even if--if the engine...?

Her teeth snapped together upon the thought, its diddering horror.
Surely, it was as bad a predicament as could be for a girl!

But, suddenly, through all the horripilation there seemed to shine a
light.

Somehow, Pem was conscious of it in the poor numb sheath of her own
girlish being--and beyond.

And she knew that her stark lips were praying: "Oh! Lord--oh!
Father--help me-e to hold on. Don't let us--go--under! I want--I want
so-o to live to see Daddy's rocket go off!... He ..."

The stiff sobs tumbled apart there, as it were.

But the Light remained, the Presence, so near as it seemed to Pem at the
moment--even as she had felt it before upon a mountain-top, or at some
matchless moment of beauty--that she almost lisped confusedly: "Daddy in
Heaven!" as once, a two-year-old, she had prattled it at her father's
knee.

Then what--what? Another voice prattling near her--chattering icily! A
bully human voice!

"Gosh! Something r-rotten in the State of Denmark," it gasped. "Jove! I
like excitement, but I'd rather be warm enough to enjoy it. Oh! Dad, if
there are any others left in that car, the one on end, you help 'em. I
must attend to these girls."

"T-take her first--U