ws she was
quick at understanding. My heart was in my mouth for her, but she never
made a mistake, or a stumble where a stumble would have meant the end.
She called to me suddenly; something that sounded like, "They're
coming!"

I turned my head and saw out of the tail of my eye, as a man sees when
he's riding a race. They _were_ coming! Macartney's men, and--I
thought--Macartney; but I knew better than to look long enough to make
sure. His men, anyhow, had raced out on the lake as we had raced, and
there was no need to watch what became of them. Their dying screams came
to us, as they floundered and sank in their heavy boots through snow and
frazil ice, to depths they would never get out of. I might have been
sick anywhere else. I was fierce with joy out there in Lac Tremblant,
running with a girl over the thin crust under which death lurked to
snatch at us, as it had snatched at Macartney's men. Neither of us
spoke. I was thinking too hard. I could have run indefinitely as we were
running, but Paulette was just a girl. What of Paulette if she slackened
with weariness, if I led her wrong by six inches, or missed a single
threatening sign on the stuff we fled over?

If I had been sure Macartney was drowned with his men, I might have
taken her back to La Chance; but I was not sure. And, Macartney or no
Macartney, the track I had led her out on the lake by was the only one I
would have dared trust to return on,--and it was all lumps of snowy
lolly and blue water, where Macartney's men had broken through. I looked
ahead of me with my mind running like a mill. We had done about half the
five-mile crossing; we might do the rest if we could stop and breathe
for ten minutes, for five, even for two. Only, in all the width of the
lake that lay like cake icing in front of us, there was not one place
where we could dare to stand. The water under us was higher than I had
ever known it. Not one single dagger-toothed rock showed as they had
showed when I crossed it in a canoe the night before it froze to the
thick slush that was all it ever froze to. There was not one single
place to----But violently, out of the back of my memory, something came
to me. There was one place in Lac Tremblant where, high water or low, a
man might always stand--if I could hit it in the smothering, featureless
snow.

"The island!" I gasped out loud. Because there was one--a high, narrow
island without even a bush on it--rising gradually, not precipitate