Temptation beset me even then, but in those first months my natural innocence was like a shield. By and by I began to feel the weight of it, and to lighten the load a little. That wonderful comedy which was being enacted in the life around me had begun to excite my interest when I went home to work in the fields for the summer. I returned to school in the autumn, a big swarthy youth of seventeen. Before the end of that year the first of these many adventures of mine opened the gate of a better life before me. It was a day in December. Henry and Florence Dunbar, Ralph Buckstone, and I were skating on the lake. The ice was new, and bent a little under our feet as we flew, out on the glassy plain in pursuit of Florence, more daring and expert than the rest of us. The day was cloudless, and the smooth lake roof shone in the sunlight. An hour later we were returning, with Florence a hundred or more feet ahead of us, when I heard the snap of the breaking ice and saw her go down like a stone falling through a skylight. I skated straight for the break, and, taking a deep breath, crashed among the broken slabs of ice and down into cold, roaring water. My hand touched something, and I seized it--her coat, as I knew by the feeling. Then came that little fraction of a minute in which one must do the right thing and do it quickly. I could see, of course, and could hear the shouts of the boys, the click of skates passing near, and the stir of the shattered ice. That saved us, that sound of the wavering ice. I made for it, got my hand through, and caught a shinny stick in the hands of Henry Dunbar, who was lying flat near the edge of the break. There we hung and lived until the boys came with a pole and got us out. Chilled? No. I was never so hot in my life until I began to feel the wind. One day soon after that my father came into the village and said that I was to board at the house of Mr. Daniel W. Smead, have three square meals a day, and a room with four windows and a stove in it. Poor lad! I did not know until long after that Florence and Henry paid the bill. My father said that he had sold the big Wilkes mare and her foal, and I supposed that that accounted for his generosity. Florence would have it that I had saved her life, although the truth is that if I had not gone down after her one of the other boys would have done so, I am sure, or she might even have reached the air alone. How she pitied me after that! Almost every day she tried to show me her gratitude with some little token--a flower, a tender word or look, or an invitation to supper. I loved her with all the steadfastness of the true-born Yankee, but it seemed to me now that my love was hopeless. I could never ask her to marry me, for how could she say no to me with all that burden of gratitude in her heart? How could I have got an honest answer if I had been unfair enough to ask it? CHAPTER II