During the war in Matabeleland she had developed a feverish thirst for reading newspapers, and about them she had found Lamont’s name pretty frequently strewn in connection with that disastrous rising and a certain dare-devil corps known as Lamont’s Tigers, from the fight at the Kezane Store onwards. But ever he seemed to be the leader of this or that desperate venture, wherein the rescue of some outlying, half-armed band, comprising women and children, was the object, and that against large odds. And this saviour of his countrymen—and women—from the horrors of savage massacre, was the man whom she, Violet Courtland, had denounced that very day two years ago, had denounced in public, with every expression of aversion and disgust, as a coward.
She had not been able to escape from the sound of his name. At the dinner-table, in the ballroom—everywhere—his deeds came under discussion and comment; and that in one key—admiration. Moreover, certain newspaper men began to rake up two or three of his doings during the former war in the same wild country, causing Violet Courtland’s eyes to open very wide as she recalled the scene by the mere, and how she had driven this very man from her as a coward.
Two years ago that very day! Strange that exactly the same conditions should prevail: the same hard frost; the same silver sparkle on the bare trees; even the same Christmas Eve bells practising their carillon at intervals. A wave of association it might have been that moved Violet to take her skates, and start for the frozen mere. She was alone now, but she would be sure to find somebody there—the rector’s girls perhaps, and a few others.
She has judged correctly. The surface of Courtland Mere is covered with a smooth and glassy sheet. The ring of the skates is melodious upon the air, and gliding forms dart hither and thither: but these are few—only four, in fact—for the mere is not yet thrown open, and the ice, undulating freely, here and there with an ominous crack, is none too safe even for these four.
“Come back, Violet,” cries a girl’s clear voice. “You’re too far out. It’s awfully thin there. Do you hear?”—as a couple of warning cracks dart along the heaving surface.
“Yes, do come back, Miss Courtland,” echoes the only man in the party. “You’re near the spring hole. Do come back. It’s beastly dangerous.”
Violet Courtland throws back her head and laughs defiantly, circling ever nearer to the fatal spot. One, seeing but unseen, amid the undergrowth beneath the black pines, takes in the picture—the warm kiss of the frosty air upon the flower-like face, framed so seductively in its winter furs; the curve of the red lips, laughing mischievously; the sparkle in the large clear eyes, as the answer is shrilled back—
“Not for me. I’m light enough to go over even the spring hole itself. Oh—h—!”
For, with these words, the ice wave beneath her gliding feet rises and falls like a sheet in the breeze. A crack, and then another—then a horrid shattering sound as of shivered glass. The water, forced through the cracks, spurts upward in blade-like lines, and, with hardly time to utter a shriek, Violet disappears, feet downwards, beneath the surface. A great slab of blue ice, momentarily dislodged, heaves endways upward, then settles down above the head of the girl. The grim mere has literally swallowed its prey.
Those who behold are petrified with horror. Full a hundred yards are they from the disaster, but the man skims straight for the spot. He can do nothing, for he is heavy of build, and the ice will give way beneath his weight long before he reaches her. It will only mean one more victim. But almost instantaneously with the catastrophe a startling thing happens.