Mortimer was astonished to find he had already drifted so far.
"How much longer could you have stood it!" Mr. Halleck asked, in tones that trembled a little.
"Not another half-hour," Mortimer declared, and probably he was right.
Next day he succeeded in finding his boat, safely lodged among some willows; but the beaver was missing, having probably been jarred off the nest on the stub by the ice-cake striking against it.
The river had lowered considerably, and Mortimer, while searching for his boat, saw numerous ice-rafts moving down the channel; yet he could not repress a conviction that something more than mere good fortune had directed the ice-cake to touch at his bleak and comfortless perch in the nick of time to save his life.
THE "HOW-TO-DO-IT" BOOKS
By J. S. ZERBE