e themselves fast to it at either end, and the
baron in the middle. He claimed the food as his portion, and strapped
it to his broad shoulders. Frona watched their progress from the bank.
The first hundred yards were easy going, but she noticed at once the
change when they had passed the limit of the fairly solid shore-ice.
Her father led sturdily, feeling ahead and to the side with his staff
and changing direction continually.

St. Vincent, at the rear of the extended line, was the first to go
through, but he fell with the pole thrust deftly across the opening and
resting on the ice. His head did not go under, though the current
sucked powerfully, and the two men dragged him out after a sharp pull.
Frona saw them consult together for a minute, with much pointing and
gesticulating on the part of the baron, and then St. Vincent detach
himself and turn shoreward.

"Br-r-r-r," he shivered, coming up the bank to her. "It's impossible."

"But why didn't they come in?" she asked, a slight note of displeasure
manifest in her voice.

"Said they were going to make one more try, first. That Courbertin is
hot-headed, you know."

"And my father just as bull-headed," she smiled. "But hadn't you
better change? There are spare things in the tent."

"Oh, no." He threw himself down beside her. "It's warm in the sun."

For an hour they watched the two men, who had become mere specks of
black in the distance; for they had managed to gain the middle of the
river and at the same time had worked nearly a mile up-stream. Frona
followed them closely with the glasses, though often they were lost to
sight behind the ice-ridges.

"It was unfair of them," she heard St. Vincent complain, "to say they
were only going to have one more try. Otherwise I should not have
turned back. Yet they can't make it--absolutely impossible."

"Yes . . . No . . . Yes! They're turning back," she announced. "But
listen! What is that?"

A hoarse rumble, like distant thunder, rose from the midst of the ice.
She sprang to her feet. "Gregory, the river can't be breaking!"

"No, no; surely not. See, it is gone." The noise which had come from
above had died away downstream.

"But there! There!"

Another rumble, hoarser and more ominous than before, lifted itself and
hushed the robins and the squirrels. When abreast of them, it sounded
like a railroad train on a distant trestle. A third rumble, which
approached a roar and was of greater