Judge Whaley had been a powerful man and an accomplished sportsman;
and still as resolute as in youth, struggled with all intelligence for
his life. He sank to the bottom on first breaking through the ice,
then reaching upward made two or three powerful efforts to catch the
rim of the ice-field and sank again in each endeavor, weighted down
with leather and iron. He had sunk to rise no more when Perry reached
the edge of the field, placed the end of the rail over the abyss and
planted the negro's weight upon it, and then he dived, head foremost,
into the freezing salt depths--where the tide was running--and with
the carriage rein looped in his right hand. Before he could lay hand
upon his father, that desperate man had seized him by the hair and
drawn his head to the bottom, and every instant Perry felt that his
remainder of breath was almost run unless he could break that iron
hold. Even in that instant of agony, with death painting its awful
pageantry on his interior sight, Perry felt a gladder kind of destiny;
that perhaps the arms of a father's love were around him, and in
another sphere, already about to dawn, the shadow might depart from
that kind face and unyearning heart.

But with a sense of more human dutifulness, Perry recalled his
residuum of perception. It was necessary to break that drowning man's
grapple upon his hair, and taking the only way, if cruel, to assist
his father, the young man struck the elder's knuckles with his
clinched fist. As they released the rein was thrown about Judge
Whaley's shoulders and run through the buckle, and as his rescuer,
almost exhausted, swam upward, he made the rein fast to his ankle and
seized hold of the rail. Here occurred another agonizing delay. The
negro could not pull the rail in, between his own fears and the double
burden; the young man was exhausted and cramped with cold, and every