and say that these were not the only considerations.  Just as the motives of no man are good without some admixture of evil, so are the motives of no man entirely bad.  I do not think that Westcott, in taking charge of Katy, was wholly generous, yet there was a generous, and after a fashion, maybe, a loving feeling for the girl in the proposal.  That good motives were uppermost, I will not say.  They were somewhere in the man, and that is enough to temper our feeling toward him.

Isa Marlay was very unwilling to have Katy go.  But the poor little thing was disheartened where she was—­the shore did not seem very far away, looking along the water horizontally—­the cries of the people on the bank seemed near—­she was sure she could not hold on much longer—­she was so anxious to get out of this cold lake—­she was so afraid to die—­she dreaded the black leeches at the bottom—­she loved and trusted Smith as such women as she always love and trust—­and so she was glad to accept his offer.  It was so good of Smith to love her so and to save her.  And so she took hold of his coat-collar as he bade her, and Westcott started to swim toward the nearest shore.  He had swam his two miles once, when he was a boy, testing his endurance in the waters of the North River, and Diamond Lake was not a mile wide.  There seemed no reason to doubt that he could swim to the shore, which could not in any event be more than half a mile away, and which seemed indeed much nearer as he looked over the surface of the water.  But Westcott had not taken all the elements into the account.  He had on his clothing, and before he had gone far, his boots seemed to fetter him, his saturated sleeves dragged through the water like leaden weights.  His limbs, too, had grown numb from remaining so long in the water, and his physical powers had been severely taxed of late years by his dissipations.  Add to this that he was encumbered by Katy, that his fright now returned, and that he made the mistake so often made by the best of swimmers under excitement, of wasting power by swimming too high, and you have the causes of rapid exhaustion.

“The shore seems so far away,” murmured Katy.  “Why don’t Albert come and save us?” and she held on to Smith with a grasp yet more violent, and he seemed more and more embarrassed by her hold.

“Let go my arm, or we’ll both drown,” he cried savagely, and the poor little thing took her left hand off his arm, but held all the more firmly to his collar; but her heart sank in hopelessness.  She had never heard him speak in that savage tone before She only called out feebly, “Brother Albert!” and the cry, which revealed to Westcott that she put no more trust in him, but turned now to the strong heart of her brother, angered him, and helped him to take the resolution he was already meditating.  For his strength was fast failing; he looked back and could see the raft nearing the capsized boat, but he felt that he had not strength enough left to