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