bsurd though it was. I
screamed again in desperation, and tried to haul myself out by catching
at the rushes. They were rotten with the frost and gave way in my hand.
I made a frantic effort at the ice again; stumbled and fell on my knees
in the water. I was wet all over now, and I gasped. My limbs ached
agonizingly with the cold. I should be, if not drowned, yet benumbed,
frozen to death here alone in the great mere, among the frozen reeds and
under the steely sky.

I was pausing, standing still, and rapidly becoming almost too benumbed
to think or hold myself up, when I heard the sound of skates and the
weird measure of the "Lenore March" again. I held my breath; I desired
intensely to call out, shriek aloud for help, but I could not. Not a
word would come.

"I did hear some one," he muttered, and then in the moonlight he came
skating past, saw me, and stopped.

"_Sie_, Fraeulein!" he began, quickly, and then altering his tone. "The
ice has broken. Let me help you."

"Don't come too near; the ice is very thin--it doesn't hold at all," I
chattered, scarcely able to get the words out.

"You are cold?" he asked, and smiled. I felt the smile cruel; and
realized that I probably looked rather ludicrous.

"Cold!" I repeated, with an irrepressible short sob.

He knelt down upon the ice at about a yard's distance from me.

"Here it is strong," said he, holding out his arms. "Lean this way,
_mein Fraeulein_, and I will lift you out."

"Oh, no! You will certainly fall in yourself."

"Do as I tell you," he said, imperatively, and I obeyed, leaning a
little forward. He took me round the waist, lifted me quietly out of the
water, and placed me upon the ice at a discreet distance from the hole
in which I had been stuck, then rose himself, apparently undisturbed by
the effort.

Miserable, degraded object that I felt! My clothes clinging round me;
icy cold, shivering from head to foot; so aching with cold that I could
no longer stand. As he opened his mouth to say something about its being
"happily accomplished," I sunk upon my knees at his feet. My strength
had deserted me; I could no longer support myself.

"Frozen!" he remarked to himself, as he stooped and half raised me. "I
see what must be done. Let me take off your skates--_sonst geht's
nicht_."

I sat down upon the ice, half hysterical, partly from the sense of the
degrading, ludicrous plight I was in, partly from intense yet painful
delight at being thus once