For tenderness is an acquired
grace in men, and it was not common in our neighbourhood.
What was going on was that John Binder had torn his hat from his head
and was saying, "I don't know if there's aught we _can_ do, but I can't
go home myself and leave him yonder. I'm a married man with a family,
but I don't vally _my_ life if----"
But the rest of this speech was drowned in noise more eloquent than
words, and then it broke into cries of "See thee!--It is--it's t'
maester! and he has--no!--yea!--he _has_--he's gotten him. Polly, lass!
he's fetched up thy Arthur by t' hair of his heead."
It was strictly true. The school-master told me afterwards how it was.
When he found that the ice would bear no longer, he rolled into the
water on purpose, but, to his horror, he felt himself seized by the
drowning man, which pulled him suddenly down. The lad had risen once, it
seems, though we had not seen him, and had got a breath of air at the
hole, but the edge broke in his numbed fingers, and he sank again and
drifted under the ice. When he rose the second time, by an odd chance it
was just where Mr. Wood broke in, and his clutch of the school-master
nearly cost both their lives.
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