With one piercing, ringing shriek, one bound, Ismay was running again, like an arrow from a bow. Running with skirts drawn up, elbows down, steady and fast as a man who must win a race. She dared not think what it meant if she could not reach Cristiane before she was on that black mockery of ice. No wonder her ringing scream sounded so wild and dreadful in the clear air; no wonder she ran with the blood beating in her eyes and forehead, the sharp air rasping in her agonized lungs. She shrieked again. No matter what Marcus thought if only she could keep Cristiane off that ice. At that shrill cry Cristiane turned and went on faster. Ismay should not frighten her before Marcus Wray, who had laughed and forbidden her to dare the crossing, as if she were a town-bred baby. Miles Cylmer, a long way off behind his cedars, shouted in answer and ran down the long shore, too late to stop what he saw. Cristiane, laughing, defiant, on the edge of the black ice, a few rods behind her, bareheaded, slim, nearly exhausted, Ismay running to cut her off. Wray had turned at the man’s voice and cried aloud: “Go back! Don’t try it.” But it was no accident that made him fall flat as he spoke. Cylmer ran as he, too, had never run before, for the black ice had crashed from under Cristiane’s feet. She went through like a stone as she stepped on it. Yet the next second he saw her white hand flung up from the black ice, the blacker water; saw Ismay, flung flat on the sound ice, stretch out till she caught the hand in hers; did not see that Cristiane’s other hand had clutched her as with a vise, nor that Ismay was completely done and exhausted. And Cristiane le Marchant was a well-grown, heavy girl, Ismay slight and dainty. Then inch by inch the sound ice cracked around them, as Cristiane, in her frantic struggling, drew Ismay nearer and nearer death. As Cylmer reached her it broke under her. But it was Mrs. Trelane who screamed as she ran frantically down from the avenue, where she had followed Ismay from pure wonder at the girl’s actions. “He told me he wouldn’t do it! Oh, I might have known,” she cried helplessly, as she ran. She dropped on her knees with a great sob as she reached the lakeshore, and hid her eyes in terror. On the grass beside Cristiane in her priceless, soaked furs, lay Ismay in her thin house-gown. There was a crimson stain oozing from her set and speechless mouth, and she was deadly still, the blood thick in that clay-cold body that had been so quick and warm but now. For once Mrs. Trelane was careless of appearances. “What have you done?” she shrieked at Wray. “What----” But his hand was on her shoulder. “Tried to save Ismay,” he said shortly, as was true, for he had done his best to help Cylmer, only to be savagely thrust out of the way.