The gliding brush heap, by slow and flitting advances, had progressed about to within gunshot of the scarce suspecting fowls, and Perry and the negro, from different sides of the cove, watched with the keenest interest—­when suddenly, with very little noise, the ice gave way and Judge Whaley had sunk in deep water, loaded down with heavy gunning boots, shot-belt, overcoat and gun.  The negro stood paralyzed a minute and then fell upon his knees, unknowing what to do.  A sense of joy started in Perry Whaley’s breast as strong as his apprehensive fears.  He might be made the instrument of saving that beloved life, and dissipating the spell of its indifference!

Nothing but this ardent passion saved Perry himself from drowning.  He had crossed the cove ere yet the impulse of parental recognition had taken form, and throwing a rein from the carriage around the negro man’s armpits, and seizing a long fence-rail, ran rapidly across, pulling both toward the point of danger.

Judge Whaley had been a powerful man and an accomplished sportsman; and still as resolute as in youth, struggled with all intelligence for his life.  He sank to the bottom on first breaking through the ice, then reaching upward made two or three powerful efforts to catch the rim of the ice-field and sank again in each endeavor, weighted down with leather and iron.  He had sunk to rise no more when Perry reached the edge of the field, placed the end of the rail over the abyss and planted the negro’s weight upon it, and then he dived, head foremost, into the freezing salt depths—­where the tide was running—­and with the carriage rein looped in his right hand.  Before he could lay hand upon his father, that desperate man had seized him by the hair and drawn his head to the bottom, and every instant Perry felt that his remainder of breath was almost run unless he could break that iron hold.  Even in that instant of agony, with death painting its awful pageantry on his interior sight, Perry felt a gladder kind of destiny; that perhaps the arms of a father’s love were around him, and in another sphere, already about to dawn, the shadow might depart from that kind face and unyearning heart.

But with a sense of more human dutifulness, Perry recalled his residuum of perception.  It was necessary to break that drowning man’s grapple upon his hair, and taking the only way, if cruel, to assist his father, the young man struck the elder’s knuckles with his clinched fist.  As they released the rein was thrown about Judge Whaley’s shoulders and run through the buckle, and as his rescuer, almost exhausted, swam upward, he made the rein fast to his ankle and seized hold of the rail.  Here occurred another agonizing delay.  The negro could not pull the rail in, between his own fears and the double burden; the young man was exhausted and cramped with cold, and every instant his father, still submerged, was drowning.  At this moment when the renewed probability of death brought no compensations of a