It happened, however, that Mr. Sherwood did not go to Chicago to work in
the machine shop. Something happened before the week was out, that quite
put his intention aside.
Indeed, Nan declared that two important happenings just then changed the
current of affairs at the little cottage on Amity Street and that she
had a principal part in the action of the first of these unexpected
happenings.
It was lovely skating on Norway Pond, and both Nan and her chum, Bess
Harley, were devoted to the sport. Nan had been unable to be on the ice
Saturdays, because of her home tasks; but when her lessons were learned,
she was allowed to go after supper.
It happened to be just at the dark of the moon this week; that kept many
off the ice, although the weather was settled and the ice was perfectly
safe. Sometimes the boys built a bonfire on Woody Point, with refuse
from the planing mill, and that lit up a good bit of the ice.
But once out on the pond, away from the shadows cast by the high banks,
the girls could see well enough. They were both good skaters, and with
arms crossed and hands clasped, they swung up the middle of the pond in
fine style.
“I just love to skate with you, Nan,” sighed Bess ecstatically. “You
move just like my other self. We're Siamese twins. We strike out
together perfectly. Oh, my dear! I don't see whatever I am to do if you
refuse to go to Lakeview with me.”
Nan could scarcely keep from telling Bess of the wonderful new fortune
that seemed about to come to her; but she was faithful to her home
training, and only said:
“Don't fret about it, honey. Maybe something will turn up to let me go.”
“If you'd let my father pay your way-----?” insinuated Bess.
“Don't talk of that. It's impossible,” said Nan decisively. “It's a long
time yet to fall. Maybe conditions will be different at home. A dozen
things may happen before school opens in September.”
“Yes! But they may not be the right things,” sighed Bess.
She could not be too melancholy on such a night as this, however. It was
perfectly quiet, and the arch of the sky was like black velvet pricked
out with gold and silver stars. Their soft radiance shed some light upon
the pond, enough, at least, to show the girl chums the way before them
as they skimmed on toward Powerton Landing.
They had left a noisy crowd of boys behind them, near the stamp Factory,
mostly mill boys, and the like. Bess had been taught at home to shrink
from association with the mill people and that is why she had urged Nan
to take this long skate up the pond. Around the Tillbury end of it they
were always falling in with little groups of mill boys and girls whom
Bess did not care to meet.
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 shore 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 muffler 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
passengers 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
chores?
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 shore of the pond on the narrow strip of lowland at the
foot of the bluffs. They could see the lights shining 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 shore, 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-fashioned hockey, “shinny-on-your-own-side” as it was
locally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack of
the shinny-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 passenger 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 ashore.
“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 shore, 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 muffler 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 shore. “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 muffler 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
passenger 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 passenger. 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.”