ck?
Say the word and we'll back you to the limit."

"We must take a look around the wreck of the ice-house," replied the
other, "though I hardly believe any one could have been inside at the
time it fell."

"Whew, I should surely hope not!" cried Tom; "for the chances are ten
to one he'd be crushed as flat as a pancake before now, with all that
timber falling on him. I wouldn't give a snap of my fingers for his
life, Jack."

"Let's hope then there's no other victim," said Jack. "If there is
none, it will let the ice company off easier than they really deserve
for allowing so ramshackle a building to stand, overhanging the river
just where we like to do most of our skating every winter."

"Suppose we climb around the timbers and see if we can hear any sound
of groaning," suggested Bobolink, suiting the action to his words.

Several men from the other ice-house reached the spot just then.

Jack turned to them as a measure of saving time. If there were no men
working in the wrecked building at the time it fell there did not seem
any necessity for attempting to move any of the twisted timbers that
lay in such a confused mass.

"Hello! Jan," he called out as the panting laborers arrived. "It was a
big piece of luck that none of you were inside the old ice-house when
it collapsed just now."

The man whom he addressed looked blankly at the boy. Jack could see
that he was laboring under renewed excitement.

"Look here! was there any one in the old building, do you know, Jan?"
he demanded.

"I ban see Maister Garrity go inside yoost afore she smash down," was
the startling reply.

The boys stared at each other. Mr. Thomas Garrity was a very rich and
singular citizen of Stanhope.

Finally Bobolink burst out with:

"Say, you know Mr. Garrity is one of the owners of these ice-houses,
fellows. I guess he must have come up here to-day to see for himself
if the old building was as rickety as people said."

"Huh! then I guess he found out all right," growled Tom Betts.

"Never mind that now," said Jack, hastily. "Mr. Garrity never had much
use for the scouts, but all the same he's a human being. We've got our
duty cut out for us plainly enough."

"Guess you mean we must clear away this trash with the help of these
men here, Jack," suggested Wallace, eagerly.

"Just what I had in mind," confessed Jack. "But before we start in
let's all listen and see if we can hear anything like a groan."

All of them stood in an