"O Sabrey, Sabrey! must you indeed perish?" at length burst
convulsively from Miss McRea, in the most touching accents of distress.

"Is there no help? Can no one save her?" added the agonized father.

"Yes, save her--save her!" exclaimed Peters, now eagerly addressing
the men he affected so to despise. "Can't some of you get on to the
ice there, and bring her off? Five guineas to the man who will do it;
yes, ten! Quick! run, run, or you'll be too late," he added, turning,
from one to another, without offering to start himself.

Throwing a look of silent scorn on his contemptible foe, Woodburn,
having been anxiously casting about him in thought for some means of
rescuing the ill-fated girl from her impending doom, now, with the air
of one acting only on his own responsibility, hastily called on his
companions to follow him, and led the way, with rapid strides, down
along the banks of the stream, as near the main channel as the water
and ice, already bursting over the banks into the road, would permit.
But although he could easily keep abreast of the fair object of his
anxiety, of whom he occasionally obtained such glimpses through the
brushwood here lining the banks as to show him that she still retained
her footing on the same block of ice, which still continued to be
borne on with the surrounding mass, yet he could perceive no way of
reaching her--no earthly means by which she could be snatched from the
terrible doom that seemed so certainly to await her; for along the
whole extent of the moving ice, and even many rods in advance of it,
the water, dammed up, and forced from the choked channel, was gushing
over the banks, and sweeping down by their sides in a stream that
nothing could withstand. And, to add to the almost utter hopelessness