y was resolute and
bent on self-preservation from the first moment. Miss Marlay was
resolute, but full of sympathy for the rest. With characteristic
practical sense, she did what she could to make herself and those within
her reach secure, and then with characteristic faith she composed her
mind to death if it should come, and even ventured with timid courage to
exhort Katy and Miss Minorkey to put their trust in Christ, who could
forgive their sins, and care for them living or dying. Even the most
skeptical of us respect a settled belief in a time of trial. There was
much broken praying from others, simply the cry of terror-stricken
spirits. In all ages men have cried in their extremity to the Unseen
Power, and the drowning passengers in Diamond Lake uttered the same old
cry. Westcott himself, in his first terror, prayed a little and swore a
little by turns.

The result of self-possession in the case of Isa Marlay and Helen
Minorkey was the same. They did not waste their strength. When people
drown, it is nearly always from a lack of economy of force. Here was
poor little Katy so terrified at thoughts of drowning, and of the cold
slimy bed at the bottom of the lake, and more than all at thoughts of the
ugly black leeches that abounded at the bottom, that she was drawing
herself up head and shoulders out of the water all the time, and praying
brokenly to God and Brother Albert to come and help them. Isa tried to
soothe her, but she shuddered, and said that the lake was so cold, and
she knew she should drown, and Cousin Isa, and Smith, and all of them.
Two or three times, in sheer desperation, little Katy let go, but each
time Isa Marlay saved her and gave her a better hold, and cheered her
with assurances that all would be well yet.

While one party on the shore were building a raft with which to reach the
drowning people, Albert Charlton and George Gray ran to find the old
boat. But the young men who had rowed in it, wishing to keep it for their
own use, had concealed it in a little estuary on the side of the lake
opposite to the village, so that the two rescuers were obliged to run
half the circumference of the lake before they found it. And even when
they reached it, there were no oars to be found, the party rowing last
having carefully hidden them in the deep grass of the slough by the
outlet. George Gray's quick frontiersman's instinct supplied the
deficiency with sticks broken from a fallen tree. But with the tim