Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 8

There was another reason this evening for keeping away from the stamp factory, too. The manager of that big shop had hired a gang of ice cutters a few days before, and had filled his own private icehouse. The men had cut out a roughly outlined square of the thick ice, sawed it into cakes, and poled it to sh.o.r.e and so to the sleds and the manager's icehouse.

It was not a large opening in the ice; but even if the frost continued, it would be several days before the new ice would form thickly enough to bear again over that spot.

Elsewhere, however, the ice was strong, for all the cutting for the big icehouses had been done long before near the Landing. The lights of Powerton Landing were twinkling ahead of them as the two friends swept on up the long lake. The wind was in their faces, such wind as there was, and the air was keen and nippy.

The action of skating, however, kept Nan and Bess warm. Bess in her furs and Nan in her warm tam-o'-shanter and the m.u.f.fler Momsey had knitted with her own hands, did not mind the cold.

The evening train shrieked out of the gap and across the long trestle just beyond the landing, where it halted for a few seconds for pa.s.sengers to embark or to leave the cars. This train was from Chicago, and on Monday Papa Sherwood expected to go to that big city to work.

The thought gave Nan a feeling of depression. The little family in the Amity street cottage had never been separated for more than a day since she could remember. It was going to be hard on Momsey, with Papa Sherwood away and Nan in school all day. How were they going to get along without Papa Sherwood coming home to supper, and doing the hard ch.o.r.es?

Bess awoke her chum from these dreams. "Dear me, Nan! Have you lost your tongue all of a sudden? Do say something, or do something."

"Let's race the train down the pond to Tillbury," proposed Nan instantly.

The lights of the long coaches were just moving out of the station at the Landing. The two girls came about in a graceful curve and struck out for home at a pace that even the train could not equal. The rails followed the sh.o.r.e of the pond on the narrow strip of lowland at the foot of the bluffs. They could see the lights s.h.i.+ning through the car windows all the way.

The fireman threw open the door of his firebox to feed the furnace and a great glare of light, and a shower of sparks, spouted from the smokestack. The rumble of the wheels from across the ice seemed louder than usual.

"Come on, Bess!" gasped Nan, quite excited. "We can do better than this!

Why, that old train will beat us!"

For they were falling behind. The train hooted its defiance as it swept down toward Woody Point. The girls shot in toward the sh.o.r.e, where the shadow of the high bluff lay heavily upon the ice.

They heard the boys' voices somewhere below them, but Bess and Nan could not see them yet. They knew that the boys had divided into sides and were playing old-fas.h.i.+oned hockey, "s.h.i.+nny-on-your-own-side" as it was locally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack of the s.h.i.+nny-stick against the wooden block, and the "z-z-z-zip!" of the missile as it scaled over the ice.

"Those boys will get into the ice-hole if they don't look out," Nan had just said to her chum, when suddenly a wild yell arose from the hockey players.

The train was slowing down at the signal tower, and finally stopped there. A freight had got in on the main track which had to be cleared before the pa.s.senger train could go into Tillbury station. The coaches stood right along the edge of the frozen pond.

But it was nothing in connection with the evening train that caused such a commotion among the skaters near the stamp factory. There was a crash of breaking ice and a scrambling of skaters away from the spot. The boys' yells communicated panic to other people ash.o.r.e.

"He's in! He's in!" Nan and Bess heard the boys yelling. Then a man's voice took up the cry: "He'll be drowned! Help! Help!"

"That's old Peter Newkirk," gasped Nan, squeezing Bess' gloved hands tightly. "He's night watchman at the stamp works, and he has only one arm. He can't help that boy."

The youngsters who had been playing hockey so recklessly near the thin ice, were not as old as Nan and Bess, and the accident had thrown them into utter confusion. Some skated for the sh.o.r.e, screaming for ropes and fence-rails; others only tried to get away from the danger spot themselves. None did the first thing to help their comrade who had broken through the ice.

"Where are you going, Nan?" gasped Bess, pulling back. "You'll have us both in the water, too."

"We can save him! Quick!" returned her chum eagerly.

She let go of Bess and unwound the long m.u.f.fler from about her own neck.

"If we could only see him!" the girl said, over and over.

And then a brilliant idea struck Nan Sherwood, and she turned to shout to old Peter Newkirk on the sh.o.r.e. "Peter! Peter! Turn on the electric light sign! Turn it on so we can see where he's gone in!"

The watchman had all his wits about him. There was a huge electric sign on the stamp works roof, advertising the company's output. The glare of it could be seen for miles, and it lit up brilliantly the surroundings of the mill.

Peter Newkirk bounded away to the main door of the works. The switch that controlled the huge sign was just inside that door. Before Nan and Bess had reached the edge of the broken ice, the electricity was suddenly shot into the sign and the whole neighborhood was alight.

"I see him! There he is!" gasped Nan to her chum. "Hold me tight by the skirt, Bess! We'll get him!"

She flung herself to her knees and stopped sliding just at the edge of the old, thick ice. With a sweep of her strong young arm she shot the end of the long m.u.f.fler right into the clutching hands of the drowning boy.

Involuntarily he seized it. He had been down once, and submersion in the ice water had nearly deprived him of both consciousness and power to help save himself. But Nan drew him quickly through the shattered ice-cakes to the edge of the firm crystal where she knelt.

"We have him! We have him!" she cried, in triumph. "Give me your hand, boy! I won't let you go down again."

But to lift him entirely out of the water would have been too much for her strength. However, several men came running now from the stalled pa.s.senger train. The lighting of the electric sign had revealed to them what was going on upon the pond.

The man who lifted the half-drowned boy out of the water was not one of the train crew, but a pa.s.senger. He was a huge man in a bearskin coat and felt boots. He was wrapped up so heavily, and his fur cap was pulled down so far over his ears and face, that Nan could not see what he really looked like. In a great, gruff voice he said:

"Well, now! Give me a girl like you ev'ry time! I never saw the beat of it. Here, mister!" as he put the rescued boy into the arms of a man who had just run from a nearby house. "Get him between blankets and he'll be all right. But he's got this smart little girl to thank that he's alive at all."

He swung around to look at Nan again. Bess was crying frankly, with her gloved hands before her face. "Oh, Nan! Nan!" she sobbed. "I didn't do a thing, not a thing. I didn't even hang to the tail of your skirt as you told me. I, I'm an awful coward."

The big man patted Nan's shoulder lightly. "There's a little girl that I'm going to see here in Tillbury," he said gruffly. "I hope she turns out to be half as smart as you are, sissy." Then he tramped back to the train that was just then starting.

Nan began to laugh. "Did you hear that funny man?" she asked Bess. "Do stop your crying, Bess! You have no reason to cry. You are not hurt."

"But, but you might have been, been drowned, too," sobbed her chum. "I didn't help you a mite."

"Bother!" exclaimed Nan Sherwood. "Don't let's talk about it. We'll go home. I guess we've both had enough skating for tonight."

Bess wiped away her tears and clung to Nan's hand all the way to their usual corner for separating. Nan ran home from there quickly and burst into the kitchen to find Momsey and Papa Sherwood in the midst of a very serious conference.

"What is the matter?" cried Nan, startled by the gravity of her father and the exaltation upon her mother's face. "What's happened?"

"A very great thing, Nan, honey," said Momsey, drawing her daughter to her side. "Tell her, Papa Sherwood."

He sighed deeply and put away the letter they had been reading. "It's from Mr. Blake, of Edinburgh," he said. "I can no longer doubt the existence of the fortune, my dears. But I fear we shall have to strive for it in the Scotch courts."

"Oh!" cried Nan, under her breath.

"Mr. Blake tells us here that it is absolutely necessary for us to come to Scotland, and for your mother to appear in person before the court there. The sum of money and other property willed to Momsey by her great uncle is so large that the greatest care will be exercised by the Scotch judges to see that it goes to the right person."

"As your mother once said, we must throw a sprat to catch a herring. In this case we shall be throwing a sprat to catch a whale! For the amount of money we may have to spend to secure the fifty thousand dollars left by Mr. Hugh Blake, of Emberon, is small, in comparison to the fortune itself.

"We must go to Scotland," finished Mr. Sherwood firmly. "And we must start as soon as possible."

Chapter IX. ON THE WAY TO THE WILDERNESS

It seemed to Nan Sherwood that night as though she never could get to sleep. Her mind and imagination worked furiously.

Momsey and Papa Sherwood had sent her to bed early. There had been no time to tell them about the accident on the ice and her part in it.