[Illustration:  “But to know every day and hour that I’m watched.”]

So standing and distressfully musing, she heard the click of the Byingtons’ door as Ruth left Leonard on the porch.  But her thought went after Arthur.  Where was he?  That he had honestly gone where he had said he was going she painfully doubted.  She stirred to move on, but had not taken a step when a feminine cry of terror set her blood leaping and sent her flying down the arbor, and where the two paths crossed she and Leonard met at such a speed that only by seizing her with both his hands did he avoid trampling her down.  The scream was repeated again and again.

“It’s Minnie!” cried Isabel as they sprang down the path to the mill pond; and Leonard, outrunning her, called back,—­

“We’ll get her out!  She’s not gone under!”

The next moment he, and then she, were on the scene.  Minnie stood on the firmer ice away from the bank, moaning in continued agitation, but already rescued.  It was Arthur Winslow who had saved her.

Now he gained the bank with the dripping girl, where he yielded her to his wife, and without a word from him, from Isabel, or from Leonard to any one but the incessantly talking maid, the four hurried up the path.  When they reached the arbor Ruth had joined them, and there the three women turned to the cottage.  Leonard passed on toward his home.  Arthur went into his own house.

In the cottage, while being hurried into dry clothes, Minnie more coherently explained her mishap.  Wishing to play a joke on Giles, she had slipped away from the fireside company of him and Sarah to put a match to his fagots on the pond, run back with word that they were burning, and laugh with Sarah while Giles should plunge out to find the incendiaries.  But she had forgotten how frail good ice may be against a warm bank, and leaping down, had promptly broken through.  She had had the fortune to hold on by the ice’s outer edge until Arthur, whom she felt sure only Providence could have sent there, drew her out.  She was tearfully ashamed, yet not so broken in spirit but she fiercely vowed she would get even with Giles for this yet.

Leonard went to his room, Arthur to his, and each in his way shut himself in to darkness, silence, and the fury of his own heart.

One of the things most harrowing to Leonard was that, at every turn, the active part fell to Arthur, while him fate held mercilessly to the passive; and his soul writhed in unworded prayer for any conceivable turn of events that would give him leave to act, to do!

But all he could do was done.  Godfrey was sent for:  everything must await his coming.  Heaven hold Arthur’s hand till Godfrey could come!

Ruth returned home and began to lock up the house.  When, presently, she tapped at her brother’s door and looked in, he had lighted the room and was reading his telegram.

“All right over the way,” she said, and to hurry on over the grim untruth repeated briefly Minnie’s story.  “Good-night.  You go—­to-morrow?  Well, you’ll make haste back.”