“I’m going to try, Lesty!”

Henderson turned back to the marsh, and Mary Bell went too.

“Billy who?” said Mary Bell; but her heart told her, before Henderson said it, that the answer would be, “Jim Carr’s kid brother!”

“Are you good for this?” said Henderson, when the four fittest had reached that part of the marsh where the boys had been found.

She met his look courageously, his lantern showing her wet, brave young face, crossed by dripping strands of hair.

“Sure!” she said.

“Well, God bless you!” he said; “God—­bless—­you!  You take this fence, I’ll go over to that ’n.”

The rushing, noisy darkness again.  The horrible wind, the slipping, the plunging again.  Again the slow, slow progress; driven and whipped now by the thought that at this very instant—­or this one—­ the boys might be giving out, relaxing hold, abandoning hope, and slipping numb and unconscious into the rising, chuckling water.

Mary Bell did not think of the dance now.  But she thought of rest; of rest in the warm safety of her own home.  She thought of the sunny dooryard, the delicious security of the big kitchen; of her mother, so placid and so infinitely dear, on her couch; of the serene comings and goings of neighbors and friends.  How wonderful it all seemed!  Lights, laughter, peace,—­just to be back among them again, and to rest!

And she was going away from it all, into the blackness.  Her lantern glimmered,—­went out.  Mary Bell’s cramped fingers let it fall.  Her heart pounded with fear of the inky dark.

She clung to the fence with both arms, panting, resting.  And while she hung there, through rain and wind, across darkness and space, she heard a voice, a gallant, sturdy little voice, desperately calling,—­

“Jim!  Ji-i-m!”

Like an electric current, strength surged through Mary Bell.

“O God!  You’ve saved ’em, you’ve got ’em safe!” she sobbed, plunging frantically forward.  And she shouted, “All right—­all right, darling!  Hang on, boys!  Just hang on!  Hal-lo, there!  Billy!  Davy!  Here I am!”

Down in pools, up again, laughing, crying, shouting, Mary Bell reached them at last, felt the heavenly grasp of hard little hands reaching for hers in the dark, brushed her face against Billy Carr’s wet little cheek, and flung her arm about Davy Henderson’s square shoulders.  They had been shouting and calling for two long hours, not ten feet from the fence.

Incoherent, laughing and crying, they clung together.  Davy was alert and brave, but the smaller boy was heavy with sleep.

“Gee, it’s good you came!” said Davy, simply, over and over.

“You’ve got your boots on!” she shouted, close to his ear; “they’re too heavy!  We’ve got a long pull back, Davy,—­I think we ought to go stocking feet!”

“Shall we take off our coats, too?” he said sensibly.