He had never been put to a greater test. Every ounce of his strength was needed. The tendency of the stream was to carry him into the center of the current, he was heavily clothed and shod, and the girl, exhausted, was scarcely able to give aid at all. More than once he felt himself weakening. Once a sharp pain, keen as a knife wound, smote his thigh, and he was shaken with despair at the thought that swimmer's cramps--dreaded by all men who know the water--were about to put an end to the struggle. In the icy depths his bodily heat was flowing from him in a frightfully rapid stream. Closer and closer he swam, and at last only thirty feet of fast, deep water stretched between. But it seemed wholly impossible to make this last stretch. The sharp pain stabbed him again, and it seemed to him that his right leg only half responded to the command of his nerves. In a moment more they would be flung again into the cascades. "I'm afraid I can't make it," he said, too softly for Virginia to hear. He wrenched once more toward the shore. But the river gods were merciful, after all. A jack pine had fallen on the shore, struck down by a dead tree that had fallen beyond, and its green spire, still clothed with needles, lay half-submerged, forty feet out into the stream. Bill's arm encountered it, then snatched at it in a final, spasmodic impulse of his muscles. And his grip held fast. For an instant they were tossed like straws in the water, but gradually he strengthened his grip. He caught a branch with his free hand, then slowly pulled up on it. "Hang on," he breathed. "Only a moment more." He drew himself and the girl up on the slender trunk, then crawled along it toward the shore. Now they were half out of the water. And in a moment later they both felt the river bottom against their knees. He drew her to the bank, staggered and fell, and for a moment both of them lay lifeless to the soft caress of the snow. But Bill did not dare lose consciousness. He was fully aware that the fight was only half won. And despair swept the girl when her clear thought returned to tell her they had emerged upon the opposite shore from the party, and that they were drenched through and lost in the night and storm,--endless, weary paces from warmth and shelter. Before the thought had gone fully home she saw that Bill was on his feet. The twilight had all but yielded to the darkness, yet she saw that he still stood straight and strong. It was not that he had already recovered from the desperate battle in the river. Strong as he was, for himself he had only one desire--to lie still and rest and let the terrible cold take its toll. But he was the guide, the forester, and the girl's life was in his care. "Get off your clothes," he commanded. "All of them--the darkness hides you--and I'll wring 'em out. If I don't you can't live to get to the cabin. Your stockings first."