"Help! help!" the words echoed sharp and clear again through the frosty morning air, and this time the man walking hurriedly along the road heard it distinctly, paused, and turned a very startled face toward the river.
It required but a glance to take in the terrible situation; the young girl stretched at full length on the ice, holding by main strength, something above the aperture in the ice; it was certainly a woman's head.
"Courage, courage!" he cried in a voice like a bugle blast. "Help is at hand! Hold on!" And in less time than it takes to tell it, he had reached the girl's side.
"Save her, save her!" gasped Margaret Moore. "My hands are frozen; I can not hold on any longer;" and with this she sunk back unconscious, and the burden she held would have slipped from her cramped fingers back into the dark, cold waves had not the stranger caught it in time. It required all his strength, however, to draw the body, slim though it was, from the water.
One glance at the marble-white face, and he uttered a little cry:
"Great Heaven! if it isn't Jessie Bain!"
Laying his dripping burden on the bank, the man lost no time in dragging Margaret Moore back from her perilous position; then the stranger, who was a fisherman, summoned assistance, and the two young girls were quickly carried back to the cottage, and a neighbor called in.
Jessie was the first to recover consciousness. She had suffered a terrible shock, a severe chill, but the blood of youth bounded quickly in her veins. Save a little fever, which was the natural result of the counter-action, she was none the worse for her thrilling experience.
With Margaret Moore it was different. The doctor who had been called in shook his head gravely over her condition.
"It may be a very serious matter," he said, slowly; "it may result in both hands having to be amputated, leaving her a cripple for life. Deranged and a cripple!" he added, pityingly, under his breath. "It would be better far if the poor thing were to die than to drag out the existence marked out for her."