“Get on that plank, idiot!” cried Gordon, wrathfully. “And if you dare step on this lady’s board again, I’ll wring your neck. Do you hear?”
He had stepped lightly off his own plank for a moment while he drew Louise back to it. The ice gave treacherously, and a little pool of water showed where his foot had been. Louise faltered.
“It—it—flows so fast,” she said, nervously.
“It is nothing,” he reassured her. “I will be more careful another time.”
It was a perilous place for two. He hurried her to the next board as soon as the subdued transgressor had left it, he himself holding back.
It was indeed an odd procession. Dark figures balanced themselves on the slim footing, each the length of a plank from the other, the line seeming to stretch from bank to bank. It would have been ludicrous had it not been for the danger, which all realized. Some half-grown boys, prowling along the Velpen shore looking for safe skating, gibed them with flippant rudeness.
Lawson took fire.
“Whoop ’er up, boys,” he yelled, waving his hat enthusiastically.
He pranced up gayly to the Judge, tripping along on the bare ice.
“Your arm, your honor,” he cried. “It is a blot on my escutcheon that I have left you to traverse this danger-bristling way alone—you, the Judge. But trust me. If the ice breaks, I will save you. I swim like a fish.”