Carolyn of the Corners Part 36

"But-but you _told_ him he could!" wailed the widow.

"What if I did? I didn't know 'twas going to snow like this, did I?"

"But it wasn't snowin' when they went," said Mrs. Gormley, plucking up some little spirit. "I'm sure it wasn't Chetwood's fault. Oh, dear!"

"Woman," groaned Joseph Stagg, "it doesn't matter whose fault it is-or if it's anybody's fault. The mischief's done. The ice is breaking up.

It's drifting out of the inlet. You can hear it-if you'd stop talking long enough." This was rather unfair on Mr. Stagg's part, for he was certainly doing more talking than anybody else.

Just at this moment an unexpected voice broke into the discussion. There was a second woman-she had been sitting by the window-in Mrs. Gormley's front room.

"Are you positive they went out on the cove to slide, Mrs. Gormley?"

"Oh, yes, I be, Mandy," answered the seamstress. "Chet said he was goin'

there, and what Chet says he'll do, he always does."

"Then the ice has broken away and they have been carried out into the lake," groaned Mr. Stagg.

Mandy Parlow came quickly to the little hall.

"Perhaps not, Joseph," she said, speaking directly to the hardware dealer. "It may be the storm. It snows so fast they would easily get turned around-be unable to find the sh.o.r.e."

Another reverberating crash echoed from the cove. Mrs. Gormley wrung her hands.

"Oh, my Chet! Oh, my Chet!" she wailed. "He'll be drowned!"

"He won't be, if he's got any sense," snapped Mr. Stagg. "I'll get some men and we'll go after them."

"Call the dog, Joseph Stagg. Call the dog," advised Miss Amanda.

"Heh? Didn't Prince go with 'em?"

"Oh, yes, he did," wailed Mrs. Gormley.

"Call the dog, just the same," repeated Amanda Parlow. "Prince will hear you and bark."

"G.o.d bless you! So he will," cried Mr. Stagg. "You've got more sense than any of us, Mandy."

"And I'll have the chapel bell rung," she said.

"Huh! what's that for?"

"The wind will carry the sound out across the cove. That boy, Chet, will recognise the sound of the bell and it will give him an idea of where home is."

"You do beat all!" exclaimed Joseph Stagg, starting to leave the house.

But Amanda stayed him for a moment.

"Find a cap of Chet's, Mrs. Gormley," she commanded. "Don't you see Mr.

Stagg has no hat? He'll catch his death of cold."

"Why, I never thought!" He turned to speak directly to Miss Amanda, but she had gone back into the room and was putting on her outer wraps. Mrs.

Gormley, red-eyed and weeping, brought the cap.

"Don't-don't be too hard on poor Chet, sir," she sobbed. "He ain't to blame."

"Of course he isn't," admitted the hardware dealer heartily. "And I'm sure he'll look out for Hannah's Car'lyn-he and the dog."

He plunged down the steps and kept on down the hill to the waterfront.

There was an eating-place here where the waterside characters congregated, and Mr. Stagg put his head in at the door.

"Some of you fellers come out with me on the ice and look for a little girl-and a boy and a dog," said Mr. Stagg. "Like enough, they're lost in this storm. And the ice is going out."

"I seen 'em when they went down," said one man, jumping up with alacrity. "Haven't they come back yet?"

"No."

"Snow come down and blinded 'em," said another.

"Do you reckon the spring freshet's re'lly due yet?" propounded a third man.

"Don't matter whether she be or not, Rightchild," growled one of the other men. "The kids ought to be home, 'stead o' out on that punky ice."

They all rushed out of the eating-house and down to the nearest dock.

Even the cook went, for he chanced to know Carolyn May.

"And let me tell you, she's one rare little kid," he declared, out of Mr. Stagg's hearing. "How she come to be related to that hard-as-nails Joe Stagg is a puzzler."

The hardware dealer might deserve this t.i.tle in ordinary times, but this was one occasion when he plainly displayed emotion.

Hannah's Car'lyn, the little child he had learned to love, was somewhere on the ice in the driving storm. He would have rushed blindly out on the rotten ice, barehanded and alone, had the others not halted him.

"Hold on! We want a peavy or two-them's the best tools," said one of the men.

"And a couple of lanterns," said another.

Joseph Stagg stood on the dock and shouted at the top of his voice:

"Prince! Prince! Prince!"

The wind must have carried his voice a long way out across the cove, but there was no reply.

Then, suddenly, the clear silver tone of a bell rang out. Its pitch carried through the storm startlingly clear.

"Hullo! what's the chapel bell tolling for?" demanded the man who had suggested the lanterns.

"The boy will hear that!" cried another. "If he isn't an idiot, he'll follow the sound of the chapel bell."

"Ya-as," said the cook, "if the ice ain't opened up 'twixt him an' the sh.o.r.e."