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The ice is dangerous, and Miss Damer should on no account venture upon it." Perry Purtett was the bearer of this billet. He swaggered into Peter Skerrett's hall, and dreadfully alarmed the fresh-imported Englishman who answered the bell, by ordering him in a severe tone, "Hurry up now, White Cravat, with that answer! I'm wanted down to the Works.
"I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal. Well, I will show you a model wife, and here she comes!" Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round the Point, with draperies floating as artlessly artful as the robes of Raphael's Hours, or a Pompeian Bacchante. For want of classic vase or patera, Miss Damer brandished Peter Skerrett's pocket-pistol.
But the grisly thought came uninvited, returned undesired, and no resolute Avaunt, even backed by that magic wand, a cigar, availed to banish it wholly. The sky cleared cold at eleven o'clock. A sharp wind drew through the Highlands. As the train rattled round the curve below the tunnel through Skerrett's Point, Wade could see his skating course of Christmas-Day with the ladies.
He wondered where all this supply of cakes came from, and how many of them would escape the stems of ferry-boats below and get safe to sea. All at once, as he looked lazily along the lazy files of ice, his eyes caught a black object drifting on a fragment in a wide way of open water opposite Skerrett's Point, a mile distant. Perry's heart stopped beating. He uttered a little gasping cry.
Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, a DINNER, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully remembered by many over-fed foundry-men and their over-fed families. Wade had not had half skating enough. "I'll time myself down to Skerrett's Point," he thought, "and take my luncheon there among the hemlocks."
Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half Dunderbunk along the railroad-track to learn who it was and all about it. All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe and not dangerously frozen, and that Wade and Tarbox had carried her up the hill to her mother at Peter Skerrett's. Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a hero of Cap'n Ambuster's skiff.
Here, if this were a long story instead of a short one, might be given a description of Peter Skerrett's house and the menu of Mrs. Skerrett's dinner. Peter and his wife had both been to great pillory dinners, ad nauseam, and learnt what to avoid. How not to be bored is the object of all civilization, and the Skerretts had discovered the methods.
His dumb terror brought back to Wade's mind all the bad omens of the morning. "Speak!" said he, seizing Perry fiercely by the shoulder. The uproar of the Works seemed to hush for an instant, while the lad stammered faintly, "There's somebody carried off in the ice by Skerrett's Point. It looks like a woman. And there's nobody to help."
The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, Wade's friend and college comrade of ten years gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed to Wade's eyes the rumor of his return. Skerrett's Point was a mile below the Foundry. Our hero did his mile under three minutes. How many seconds under, I will not say.
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