“Remember, I shall not stay away from you long,” he answered, as he tore himself away to do her bidding.
“Suppose you skate awhile with me, Miss Hyer,” he said, smilingly, to the young girl, who accepted with delight, for he and Viola had been the observed of all observers.
Viola, left to herself, began to do some very graceful figures on the ice that she had learned while wintering in Canada two years before.
Hundreds of admiring eyes watched her with wonder and delight. But glancing back to see how Desha was progressing with his pupil, she observed Miss Hyer’s former clumsy partner making the best speed he could in her direction.
“Oh, dear, that stupid! I’ll escape him if I have to skate across the river,” she pouted, in dismay, and struck out for the opposite shore.
Directly a cry of horror rose on the air as the gliding form rushed upon thin ice that cracked beneath its weight. There was an answering cry of deadly fear, a gleam of violet velvet and shining fur, and Viola’s form sank from view beneath the treacherous breaking ice into the deep, ingulfing waves.
CHAPTER V.
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.
Sudden as a thunderbolt from a clear sky was the change that came over the gay party of skaters and the applauding spectators as they echoed the loud, horrified shriek of Viola crashing through the thin ice and disappearing into the depths of the river below.
The faces but a moment ago so gay and laughing, paled with grief and terror, and a terrible panic arose, all the skaters pressing forward toward the hole in the ice, the crowd on the shore also venturing out pell-mell, till the crystal sheet began to tremble with their heavy weight. Some fell down, and were trampled in the mad rush of others, and a dreadful loss of life seemed imminent, when all at once there rang out, high over every other sound, a loud, thrilling, masculine voice, crying authoritatively: