I did not know Guert's intentions, but I saw it was time to act with decision. We moved swiftly down to the spot where we had left the sleigh; and the reader will judge of our horror, when we found it gone! The whole of the low point of the island where we had left it, was already covered with cakes of ice that were in motion, and which had doubtless swept off the sleigh during the few minutes that we had been absent! Looking around us, however, we saw an object on the river, a little distance below, that I fancied was the sleigh, and was about to rush after it, when a voice filled with alarm, took us in another direction. Mary Wallace came out from behind a tree, to which she had fled for safety, and seizing Guert's arm, implored him not to quit her again. “Whither has Anneke gone?” I demanded, in an agony I cannot describe--“I see nothing of Anneke!” “She would not quit the sleigh,” answered Mary Wallace, almost panting for breath--“I implored--entreated her to follow me--said you _must_ soon return; but she refused to quit the sleigh. Anneke is in the sleigh, if that can now be found.” I heard no more; but springing on the still moving cakes of ice, went leaping from cake to cake, until my sight showed me that, sure enough, the sleigh was on the bed of the river, over which it was in slow motion; forced downwards before the new coating of ice that was fast covering the original surface. At first I could see no one in the sleigh; but, on reaching it, I found Anneke buried in the skins. She was on her knees: the precious creature was asking succour from God! I had a wild but sweet consolation in thus finding myself, as it might be, cut off from all the rest of my kind, in the midst of that scene of gloom and desolation, alone with Anneke Mordaunt. The moment I could make her conscious of my presence, she inquired after Mary Wallace, and was much relieved on learning that she was with Guert, and would not be left by him, for a single instant, again that night. Indeed, I saw their figures dimly, as they moved swiftly across the channel that divided the two islands, and disappear in that direction, among the bushes that lined the place to which they had gone. “Let us follow,” I said eagerly. “The crossing is yet easy, and we, too, may escape to the shore.” “Go you!” said Anneke, over whom a momentary physical torpor appeared to have passed. “Go you, Corny,” she said; “a man may easily save himself; and you are an only child--the sole hope of your parents.” “Dearest, beloved Anneke!--why this indifference--this apathy on your own behalf? Are _you_ not an only child, the sole hope of a widowed father?--do you forget _him?_” “No, no, no!” exclaimed the dear girl, hurriedly. “Help me out of the sleigh, Corny: there, I will go with you anywhere--any how--to the end of the world, to save my father from such anguish!”