chilled fingers, but slid
down, expecting to sink in the cold waters.

But he struck something solid and white. It was a large ice-cake, which
had come floating down the river and touched the elm stump. The jar of
his fall roused the boy; he staggered to his feet, feeling _strange_ in
his head, and with queer and painful sensations about the arms and
shoulders.

He tried to step, but at first it seemed as if his feet must be frozen;
yet, after stamping about for a few minutes, they began to lose their
feeling of lumpishness and to prickle.

He then sat down upon the ice, and, after a struggle, worked off his
boots, squeezed the water from his socks, and chafed and pounded his
feet until they felt alive. This done, he got up and looked around; and
hope revived within him.

The ice-cake was a large and solid one, twenty feet across at least;
and, owing to the falling of the river, it was floating down the centre
of the channel. He was, at least, floating toward home; and there was
room to stamp about and keep from freezing.

Mortimer's spirits rose with the renewed circulation of the blood. He
shouted, beat his arms about his chest, he even danced, the better to
warm himself up again.

It seemed to him now that he was being guided by fate. He then became
confused in mind--dazed, as it were. In odd vagary, as his ice-raft
floated on down the river, he peopled the darkness about him with
imaginary foes, and "squared off" at them pugnaciously. His blood
warming with this exercise, he began delivering in grandiloquent tones
the address which he had declaimed at school, when a voice from the
darkness near at hand brought him back to his situation.

"Mortimer!"

"Halloo!" he answered.

"Mortimer, is it _you_?"

"Is that you, father?" cried the young castaway, "have you got a boat?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Halleck; "but we have been alarmed. What has kept--"

"Paddle your skiff this way, father. Here, this way; I'm on a cake of
ice."

"On a cake of ice!" cried Mr. Halleck. "I knew you were in some trouble.
What has happened? I borrowed Neighbor Wescott's boat, and was going to
cross over to see if you were at Morley's with Pete, when I heard your
voice."

Mortimer was astonished to find he had already drifted so far.

"How much longer could you have stood it!" Mr. Halleck asked, in tones
that trembled a little.

"Not another half-hour," Mortimer declared, and probably he was right.

Next day he succeeded in f