The mother walked to the window and looked out upon the silent, frosty night. Low down upon the horizon myriads of stars were twinkling merrily, but high up in the heavens the moon shone with a brilliant radiance that totally eclipsed all lesser lights. The night was very still, very beautiful, but the silence and the beauty failed to bring peace to the mother's heart. She looked up into the heavens. How placidly cold the moon looked back at her, the same moon that was probably shedding its beams upon her boy at that moment and could tell her where he was if it could but speak. Why, oh why, could those beams not speak and tell her what they saw; why could they not bring her some message from the absent one! She had never felt like this before, she had never felt so restless, so uneasy. It was impossible to think of sleep; she would pray still longer. Perhaps the boy needed her prayers; perhaps he was in danger, danger of body, danger of soul, and needed her help. Her rosary in her fingers, she knelt by the window praying, praying, while the moonbeams danced and played around the kneeling figure. Perhaps it was just as well they could not speak and tell her what they saw out there upon the river. Perhaps they were trying to tell her and could not; trying to tell her of the three men, one of whom was scarce more than a boy, struggling out there in the icy water, struggling for life as the current sought to drag them down beneath the frozen surface. Their fingers clutched desperately at the ragged edges of the ice that had broken through with them and cracked and crumbled away at their touch.
Now but two figures were visible to the watching moonbeams; one had been dragged down into the black waters, down to his death in the freezing depths below.
For a moment a cloud covered the moon's face obscuring its view of things terrestrial. When it passed and that scene upon the river was once more visible, only one figure remained still struggling bravely; still clutching at the slippery, crackling ice; still fighting, not for life alone, but for his soul's salvation. What thoughts must have passed through his mind in those dreadful, despairing moments! Thoughts of sins committed, of graces neglected; thoughts of all that might have been and of all that was. Who can know of the sorrow and remorse that filled his heart, of the wild cry for help and pardon that went up from the river that night?
Meanwhile, the moon shone calmly, steadily, on the boy still fighting for his life, on the mother praying at her chamber window, and on good Father Xavier sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.
Somewhat later, but still before the dawn, he was summoned from that sleep to answer a sick call from the hospital just across the river, to which he was chaplain. Three young men coming home from the city shortly after midnight had attempted to cross the frozen river, though warned of the danger of doing so. The ice had broken through, two were drowned, one saved, and the doctors thought he would live though unconscious at present.
No, the names of the young men were not known as yet. The sisters at the hospital sent for the priest because the boy brought there wore a scapular and they knew he must be a Catholic. Aside from that nothing was known about him.
Father Xavier's heart stood still. Something told him that his boy had been one of those three. Two drowned, one saved! Which, oh, which was the one saved?
The hospital reached, it was with rapidly beating heart he followed the nurse through the ward and stood beside the bed at the farther end. The night light burned low and the features of the boy upon the bed were scarcely visible. Stooping low, a fervent "Thank God" broke from the priest's lips as he recognized in the silent figure, the boy for whom his heart had been yearning. His boy had been the one that was saved. Yes, saved from death, saved from worse than death, saved to carry out the resolutions he had made while struggling in the icy river that Christmas morning.