and the last group of skaters had disappeared
over the brow of the hill.

"You must think quickly," she said to herself.

Her eyes took in the other shore. Not a soul was there, not a dwelling of
any sort; nothing but the great ice house that stood like a lonely
sentinel on the bank. Yet something seemed to tell her that help lay in
that direction.

Once before, in a moment of danger, Grace had obeyed this same impulse and
had never regretted it. Once again she was following the instinct that
might have seemed to another person anything but wise.

Skating as she had never skated before, Grace Harlowe reached the shore in
a moment. Here, dropping to the bank, she quickly removed her skates, then
ran toward the ice house, feeling strangely unaccustomed to walking on the
ground after her long morning on skates.

"What if I am off on a wild-goose chase?" she said to herself. "Suppose
there is no one there?" She paused for an instant and then ran on faster
than before.

"I shall find help over there, I know I shall," she thought as she
hurried over the frozen ground and made straight for the ice house. There
was no time to be lost. Tom and Julia were liable to be sucked under and
drowned while she was looking for help.

Grace pushed resolutely on. In the meantime hardly four minutes had really
elapsed since the skaters had tumbled into the water.

On the other side of the ice house she came abruptly upon a man engaged in
loading a child's wagon with chips of wood.

"Help!" cried Grace. "Help! Some people have broken through the ice. Have
you a rope?"

The man made no answer whatever. He did not even look up until Grace shook
him by the shoulder.

"There is no time to lose," she cried. "They may drown at any moment.
Come! Come quickly, and help me save them."

The man looked at her with a strange, far-away expression in his eyes.

"Don't you hear me?" cried Grace in an agony of impatience. "Are you
deaf?"

He shook his head stupidly, touching his ears and mouth.

"Deaf and dumb!" she exclaimed in despair.

Holding up two fingers, Grace pointed toward the water. Then she made a
swimming motion. Perhaps he had understood. She could not tell, but her
quick eye had caught sight of a long, thin plank on the shore.

Pulling off one of her mittens, she showed him a little pearl and
turquoise ring her mother had given her for a birthday present, indicating
that she would give it to him if he would help her. Then