and, with hardly time to
utter a shriek, Violet disappears, feet downwards, beneath the surface.
A great slab of blue ice, momentarily dislodged, heaves endways upward,
then settles down above the head of the girl. The grim mere has
literally swallowed its prey.

Those who behold are petrified with horror. Full a hundred yards are
they from the disaster, but the man skims straight for the spot. He can
do nothing, for he is heavy of build, and the ice will give way beneath
his weight long before he reaches her. It will only mean one more
victim. But almost instantaneously with the catastrophe a startling
thing happens.

A man dashes from beneath the pines, and with a loud warning shout to
the others to keep away, he flings himself upon the ice, and, lying
flat, propels himself straight for the deadly spring hole, which is here
but a score of yards from the bank. Now he is fighting his way through
the heaving, crackling ice--now he disappears as if gives way beneath
him. Now he is up again; then once more, with a hiss and a splash and
the splintering of glass-like ice, he is beneath the surface again.
Those on the bank are turned to stone. Will he--will they--never come
up? Ah--h!

A head shoots above the surface--two heads! Panting, nearly winded with
his terrible exertion and the deadly cold numbing his veins, Piers
Lamont is treading water, supporting Violet in a state of
semi-unconsciousness; but powerful and wiry as he is, it is all he can
do to keep her head above the surface.

"Soames!" he shouts, recognising the man, "there are some chopped poles
lying there just inside the trees. Run, man, and throw some out. You
girls run for help--keeper's lodge the nearest. And yell--yell for all
you know how," he pants gaspingly, for the exertion of speech has
frightfully sapped his remaining strength.

"God--will they be all day!" he groans through his blue and shaking
lips. He can hear Soames tearing through the wood--then things become
mixed. The familiar landscape is whirling round. Now he is beheaded--
no, it is only the cold ice-edge against his neck. Now he is charging
an enemy, using Violet, held in front of him, as a shield. Oh yes, of
course he is a coward, for did not she say so--here--on this very spot?
And--Something comes whizzing at him. A spear--and he is unarmed.
Well, he will grasp it. No, it eludes him. Another! He has it--
grasped hard and fast. "Hold tight, old man! Now, are