“My goodness!” gasped the hardware dealer, and he started instantly away from the store, bareheaded as he was, without locking the door behind him—something he had never done before, since he had established himself in business on the main street of Sunrise Cove. Just why he ran he could scarcely have explained. Of course, the children had not gone out in this snowstorm! Mrs. Gormley—little sense as he believed the seamstress possessed—would not have allowed them to venture. Yet, why had Chet not returned? Mr. Stagg knew very well that the ungainly boy was no shirk. Having been sent home for the particular purpose of taking Carolyn May out on her sled, he would have done that, or returned immediately to the store. Although prone to find fault with Chet Gormley, the hardware dealer recognised his good qualities as certainly as anybody did. He quickened his pace. He was running—slipping and sliding over the wet snow—when he turned into the street on which his store boy and his widowed mother lived. The cottage was a little, boxlike place, and one had to climb steps to get to it. Mrs. Gormley saw him coming from the windows of the tiny front room which served her as parlour and workroom combined. The seamstress tottered to the door and opened it wide, clinging to it for support. “Oh, oh, Mr. Stagg! What’s happened now?” she gasped. “I hope poor Chet ain’t done nothin’ that he shouldn’t ha’ done. I’m sure he tries to do his very best. If he’s done anything——” “Where _is_ he?” Joseph Stagg managed to say. “Where—where is he?” repeated the widow. “Oh, do come in, Mr. Stagg. It’s snowin’, ain’t it?” Mr. Stagg plunged into the little house, head down, and belligerent. “Where’s that plagued boy?” he demanded again. “Don’t tell me he’s taken Hannah’s Car’lyn out on the cove in this storm!” “But—but you _told_ him he could!” wailed the widow. “What if I did? I didn’t know ’twas going to snow like this, did I?” “But it wasn’t snowin’ when they went,” said Mrs. Gormley, plucking up some little spirit. “I’m sure it wasn’t Chetwood’s fault. Oh, dear!” “Woman,” groaned Joseph Stagg, “it doesn’t matter whose fault it is—or if it’s anybody’s fault. The mischief’s done. The ice is breaking up. It’s drifting out of the inlet. You can hear it—if you’d stop talking long enough.” This was rather unfair on Mr. Stagg’s part, for he was certainly doing more talking than anybody else. Just at this moment an unexpected voice broke into the discussion. There was a second woman—she had been sitting by the window—in Mrs. Gormley’s front room. “Are you positive they went out on the cove to slide, Mrs. Gormley?” “Oh, yes, I be, Mandy,” answered the seamstress. “Chet said he was goin’ there, and what Chet says he’ll do, he always does.” “Then the ice has broken away and they have been carried out into the lake,” groaned Mr. Stagg. Mandy Parlow came quickly to the little hall.