you hear it?"

Her face was white as the snow without, her eyes wild and eager, her
lips apart, her head bent forward.

A shuddering chill crept along the nerves of Mr. Voss.

"Go, go quickly! Run! He may have fallen at the door!"

Ere the last sentence was finished Mr. Voss was halfway down stairs.
A blinding dash of snow came swirling into his face as he opened the
street door. It was some moments before he could see with any
distinctness. No human form was visible, and the lamp just in front
of his house shone down upon a trackless bed of snow many inches in
depth. No, Archie was not there. The cry had come to the mother's
inward ear in the moment when her boy went plunging down into the
engulfing river and heart and thought turned in his mortal agony to
the one nearest and dearest in all the earth.

When Mr. Voss came back into the house after his fruitless errand,
he found his wife standing in the hall, only a few feet back from
the vestibule, her face whiter, if that were possible, and her eyes
wilder than before. Catching her in his arms, he ran with her up
stairs, but before he had reached their chamber her light form lay
nerveless and unconscious against his breast.

Doctor Hillhouse, the old family physician, called up in the middle
of that stormy night, hesitated to obey the summons, and sent his
assistant with word that he would be round early in the morning if
needed. Doctor Angier, the assistant, was a young physician of fine