“Oh! save him; save him, Jabez!” implored Augusta, as he and her father came up. Jabez looked at her strangely. His head seemed to spin. His face went livid as that on the ice. Had his secret devotion no other end than this? True, she had called him “Jabez,” but so she had called him in his servitude. She had appealed to him as one she trusted in implicitly; but the appeal sounded as made for one she loved, and that was not himself, but he who, as boy and man, had wounded him in soul and body. The very tone of her cry was as a knell to his hopes and himself. It was his foe and his rival who was perishing! Was he called upon to risk his life to warm a serpent to sting him again? The conflict in his breast was sharp and terrible. “If thine enemy hunger, give him food,” seemed to float in his ears. There was a small gloved hand on his arm, a pale, sweet face looking up into his. The moments were flying fast. “Oh! Jabez, Jabez, do try!” “I will,” said he, hoarsely. Had he not often declared in his secret heart that he would give his life to serve her?—and should he be ungenerous enough to shrink now? “It is folly to attempt. I forbid it!” exclaimed Mrs. Ashton, laying her hand on his arm. And Ellen Chadwick, pale as Augusta, tried to stop him with—“You must not! you must not! You will perish!” Even strangers from the crowd warned him back. But he was gone ere Mrs. Chadwick softly recalled her daughter to herself. “Hush! Ellen. This is not seemly. Mr. Clegg will attempt nothing impossible.” He hurried to the side nearest Laurence; called to him, “Keep up; help is coming!”—asked for ladders; gave a word or two of instruction to Mr. Ashton and Travis; sent Nelson on the ice to try its strength; secured a rope round his own waist; then, lying flat on the cold ice, cautiously felt his way to the farther side of Aspinall, whose eyes were closed, and whose strength was ebbing fast. He hardly heard the words of cheer addressed to him. Two long ladders had been lashed side by side to give breadth of surface. These, by the help of cords and Nelson, whose sagacity was akin to reason, he drew across the cracked and gaping ice; and crept slowly from rung to rung, watched from the land breathlessly, until he reached his almost insensible rival. With rapidly benumbing fingers he secured strong ropes beneath each shoulder, sending Nelson back to the bank with the main line, in case his own strength was insufficient to lift the dead weight of Laurence, or that the ice should yield beneath the double weight. Someone sent a brandy-flask back by the dog. “Can you swallow?” he asked. There was no answer, but a gurgle.