So Toby got himself excused from practice and, after his last recitation, donned his sweater and tied a muffler around his throat and went out for a walk. It wasn’t a very invigorating sort of day, for on Sunday the weather had changed and for two days a mild south-westerly breeze had been blowing in from the Sound, causing dire apprehension on the part of the hockey men. Already the river below Loon Island showed stretches of open water and ice-cakes were floating down past the bridges and into the unfrozen Sound. It was a moist, cloudy afternoon and Toby’s feet lagged as he struck down-hill toward the little village. Wissining had one store, a general emporium that sold everything a fellow didn’t want and nothing he did. Still, one could buy pencils there, and Toby needed one, and it didn’t make much difference in which direction he walked. After the purchase he went on along the road that parallels the track and eventually leads to the footbridge to Greenburg. When he got in sight of the river he was surprised to see to what extent the ice had broken up since yesterday, or even since morning. Unless the weather grew cold again within the next two days that Broadwood game would never be played next Saturday. Toby stood on the bridge a few moments watching the ice-cakes swirl under, turning and dipping, or pile up against the piers, and then, mindful of the doctor’s instruction, he took the road along the river and wandered down toward the Point. The river widens as it nears the Sound, and to-day, with the tide running out hard and strong and the ice-cakes moving seaward it was worth watching. He had the road pretty much to himself, for Wissining is not a populous village and the day was not such as to attract many folks out of doors, and he plodded on through melting snow and rotting ice and plain brown mud until the big wrought-iron gates of the Pennimore estate blocked his further progress. From that point he could look westward along the Sound for several miles, and he paused a minute and watched a schooner dipping her way along under the brisk wind, and a coal steamer churning slowly eastward. Then he turned back and retraced his steps, since there was no alternate road, and had reached a point near the little ferry house, long since abandoned to time and weather, when a faint cry fell on his ears. Toby looked about him and saw no one save a man driving a wagon across the bridge nearly a quarter of a mile upstream. Across the river were a few shanties and although there was no one in sight it was probable that the shout had come from there. Toby went on his way, not quite satisfied, however, for the cry, as faint as it had been, had sounded like an appeal for help. And then, before he had taken a dozen steps, it came again, louder this time and seemingly closer at hand. Toby’s gaze swept the opposite shore, traveled up the river――