yet. You
must learn not to lose your head and your heart and your wits and your
sense of time in this fashion, if you mean to be any good at a pinch to
yourself or your neighbours. Has the rope come?"

"No, sir."

"Those poles?" said the school-master, getting up.

"They're here!" I shouted, as a young forest of poles came towards us,
so willing had been the owners of the jack-knives. The thickest had
been cut by the heavy man, and Mr. Wood took it first.

"Thank you, friend," he said. The man didn't speak, and he turned his
back as usual, but he gave a sideways surly nod before he turned. The
school-master chose a second pole, and then pushed both before him right
out on to the ice, in such a way that with the points touching each
other they formed a sort of huge A, the thicker ends being the nearer to
the bank.

"Now, Jack," said he, "pay attention; and no more blubbering. There's
always plenty of time for giving way _afterwards_."

As he spoke he scrambled on to the poles, and began to work himself and
them over the ice, wriggling in a kind of snake fashion in the direction
of the hole. We watched him breathlessly, but within ten yards of the
hole he stopped. He evidently dared not go on; and the same thought
seized all of us--"Can he get back?" Spreading his legs and arms he now
lay flat upon the poles, peering towards the hole as if to try if he
could see anything of the drowning man. It was only for an instant, then
he rolled over on to the rotten ice, smashed through, and sank more
suddenly than the skater had done.

The mill-girl jumped up with a wild cry and rushed to the water, but
John Binder pulled her back as he had pulled me. Martha, our housemaid,
said afterwards (and was ready to take oath on the gilt-edged Church
service my mother gave her) that the girl was so violent that it took
fourteen men to hold her; but Martha wasn't there, and I only saw two,
one at each arm, and when she fainted they laid her down and left her,
and hurried back to see what was going on. For tenderness is an acquired
grace in men, and it was not common in our neighbourhood.

What was going on was that John Binder had torn his hat from his head
and was saying, "I don't know if there's aught we _can_ do, but I can't
go home myself and leave him yonder. I'm a married man with a family,
but I don't vally _my_ life if----"

But the rest of this speech was drowned in noise more eloquent than
words, and then it broke into c