hat the fine mist was turning
into rain, and another of those dismal nights, which are often
experienced in the Middle States during the latter part of winter, was
upon the city.

I did not feel sleepy after reaching home. My wife and two children had
retired and were sound asleep. There was no one astir but myself, and
drawing my chair to the fire, I began reading the evening paper.

Fully an hour had passed in this manner and I was in the act of rising
from my chair, with the purpose of going to bed, when a sharp ring of the
bell startled me as though I had heard burglars in the house. I felt
instinctively that something serious had happened as I hurried to the
door.

"Did Ben Mayberry take a telegraphic message across the river to-night?"
asked the man, whom I recognized as a policeman.

"He started to do so," I answered tremblingly. "What's wrong."

"It's the last message he'll ever deliver; he has probably been killed!"

CHAPTER V

IN STORM AND DARKNESS

"Yes, it's the last message he'll ever deliver," repeated the policeman;
"Ben Mayberry has probably been killed!"

These were the terrible words spoken by the man who had rung my bell in
the middle of the night, and startled me almost out of my senses. I
swallowed the lump in my throat, and with a voice tremulous with emotion,
said:

"No, no! it cannot be. Who would kill him?"

"I don't mean he was murdered," the officer hastened to add, seeing my
mistake. "He was on the middle span of the bridge when it was carried
away by the flood, and that's the last of him!"

I drew a great sigh of relief. There was something unspeakably dreadful
in the thought of noble Ben Mayberry being killed by anyone, and it
lifted a vast burden from my shoulders to be told that no such awful fate
had overtaken him.

But instantly came the staggering terror that the boy had gone down in
the wreck and ruin, and at that moment was floating among the great
masses of ice and debris that were sweeping swiftly down the river
toward the sea.

"How was it?" I asked, after the officer had refused my invitation to
enter.

"The river began rising very fast at dark, but the bridge has stood so
many freshets we were hopeful of this. The water was at the top of the
abutments at nine o'clock and was still creeping up. Jack Sprall, who is
off duty to-night, was down by the bridge watching things. A little after
ten o'clock, Ben Mayberry came along and said he had a message whi