“We have him! We have him!” she cried, in triumph. “Give me your hand, boy! I won't let you go down again.”
But to lift him entirely out of the water would have been too much for her strength. However, several men came running now from the stalled passenger train. The lighting of the electric sign had revealed to them what was going on upon the pond.
The man who lifted the half-drowned boy out of the water was not one of the train crew, but a passenger. He was a huge man in a bearskin coat and felt boots. He was wrapped up so heavily, and his fur cap was pulled down so far over his ears and face, that Nan could not see what he really looked like. In a great, gruff voice he said:
“Well, now! Give me a girl like you ev'ry time! I never saw the beat of it. Here, mister!” as he put the rescued boy into the arms of a man who had just run from a nearby house. “Get him between blankets and he'll be all right. But he's got this smart little girl to thank that he's alive at all.”
He swung around to look at Nan again. Bess was crying frankly, with her gloved hands before her face. “Oh, Nan! Nan!” she sobbed. “I didn't do a thing, not a thing. I didn't even hang to the tail of your skirt as you told me. I, I'm an awful coward.”
The big man patted Nan's shoulder lightly. “There's a little girl that I'm going to see here in Tillbury,” he said gruffly. “I hope she turns out to be half as smart as you are, sissy.” Then he tramped back to the train that was just then starting.
Nan began to laugh. “Did you hear that funny man?” she asked Bess. “Do stop your crying, Bess! You have no reason to cry. You are not hurt.”
“But, but you might have been, been drowned, too,” sobbed her chum. “I didn't help you a mite.”
“Bother!” exclaimed Nan Sherwood. “Don't let's talk about it. We'll go home. I guess we've both had enough skating for tonight.”
Bess wiped away her tears and clung to Nan's hand all the way to their usual corner for separating. Nan ran home from there quickly and burst into the kitchen to find Momsey and Papa Sherwood in the midst of a very serious conference.