In desperation she shot forward a great distance without pausing. When at last she did pause it was with the utmost consternation that she realized that not one or two, but many pairs of feet were dropping pit-pat on the ice floor of the lake.
As she dodged out for another flight, she saw them—three of them—as they suddenly disappeared from sight. One to the right, one to the left, one behind her, they were closing in upon her.
There was still a space between the two to right and left. Through this she sprang, only to see a fourth directly before her. As she again dodged into a sheltering shadow she nerved herself for a scream. The girls were away, but someone, Mark Pence, the fishermen, old Timmie, might hear and come to her aid.
But what was this? She no longer caught the shuffle of moving feet. All was silent as the tomb.
For a moment she hovered there undecided. Then she caught the distant, even tramp-tramp of two pairs of heavy, marching feet. Glancing shoreward, she saw two burly policemen, their brass buttons gleaming in the moonlight, marching down the beach. It had been the presence of these officers which had held her pursuers to their shadowy hiding-places.
If she but screamed once these officers would come to her rescue! But she had, from early childhood, experienced a great fear of policemen. When she endeavored to scream, her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. And so there she stood, motionless, voiceless, until the officers had passed from her sight.
* * * * * * * *
While Lucile was experiencing the strange thrills of this terrible game out on the lake ice, Florence and Marian were witnessing mysterious actions of strange persons out on the lagoon.
In spite of the lateness of the hour, there were a number of persons skating on the north end of the lagoon, so the two girls experienced no fear as they went for a quarter-mile dash down the southern channel which lay between an island and the shore. At the south end of the lagoon the channel, which became very narrow, was spanned by a wooden bridge.
This bridge, even in the daytime, always gave Marian a shock of something very like fear, for it was here that a great tragedy ending in the death of a prominent society woman had occurred.