"I came up the river as far as I could, and have seen no boat. The floats of ice were so troublesome, that I resolved to come ashore, and walk to Ipswich. Had there been a boat between Harwich and the Nacton shore, I must have seen it. I landed close by Cowhall, and I know there was no boat on the river, at least so far." At that moment they thought they heard some one call. They listened, and plainly heard the men hallooing from the boat. "Ahoy! Ahoy!" called out Will Laud. They then listened again, and recognized the voice of Richard Lee, one of the brewing-men, who called out,-- "We have found the boat, but no one in her." "Aye, sir," said Will Laud, "then the young gentleman has got ashore!" "I fear not!" said the father; "I fear he is lost!" Laud feared the same, when he heard that the young lad had taken no mud-splashers with him: "But," he added, "if the youth knew the river, he would get out of his boat, and walk by the edge of the channel till he came to this hardware, and then he might get ashore." "What is that dark spot yonder, by the edge of the water?" said Margaret, as she stooped down to let her eye glance along the dark level line of the mud. "It is only one of the buoys," said the father, "such as they moor ships to in the reach." "There is no buoy in that part of the river," said Will. "Margaret sees something, and so do I now. I don't know what it is, but I soon will though." And without more ado, he stepped on to the mud and was soon upon all-fours, creeping along, and dragging his body over the softest places of the ooze, where he must have sunk into the mud up to his waist, if he had kept an erect posture. As he advanced, he evidently saw something lying close to the water's edge, and, after great toil, he came up to it. True enough he found it to be the stiff body of the poor youth they had been in search of. Lifting himself up, he called aloud, "Ahoy! ahoy! Margaret, you are right;" words of such joy as were never forgotten in after years by any of that party. Laud lost no time in hoisting the poor boy on his back, and, tying his stiff hands round his own neck with his handkerchief, he crept upon the mud again toward that shore where stood those anxious friends awaiting his approach. The boy was, to all appearance, stiff and lifeless. The hair of his head was one matted mass of ice and mud; his limbs were stiff and frozen; one leg seemed like a log of hard wood, the other they could bend a little. He had been up to his neck in the mud, and had evidently been overcome with the exertion of extricating himself. His clothes were drawn off his back, and had been used as mud-splashers, until exhausted nature could make no further effort, and he had sunk, unconscious, upon the ooze. Death seemed to have done his work.