At the Sluice he stopped and looked long at the people skating merrily on the rinks down on the ice of the lake between the Corn Harbour and the railway bridge.  A number of boys near his own age were among the rest having a good time.  Many of the boys brought their skates to school and never went home for lunch, but just ate a couple of sandwiches in order to spend as much as possible of the noonday pause on the ice.  Keith had asked permission to do the same, but the refusal had been peremptory.  The fact was that he was granted little or no chance to use his new skates.  Once in a while he got leave, after begging long and hard, to run over to the rinks at the New Bridge Harbour, in the North End, for a brief while in the late afternoon.  Most of the time even that scant leave was denied him.  To his mother’s general disinclination to let him out of sight was added her dread that he might fall into the water and get drowned.  He promised by everything sacred that he would not leave the rink, which she ought to know was perfectly safe, but her morbid fears would not listen to reason.  More and more he was beginning to give up asking even.  The disappointment of a refusal was too bitter to be borne often.

As he stood leaning against the bridge railings, his eyes strayed farther and farther along the surface of the lake, which lay frozen as far out as he could see.  There were rinks on the other side of the railway bridge, too, and here and there he noticed isolated black figures gliding along the unswept spaces outside the rinks.  Suddenly he caught sight of a large gathering of people very far out.  They were moving slowly toward the shore, and evidently they were held together by some common purpose.  He wondered what they could be doing out there, far beyond the last rink, but the distance was too great to give him any basis for speculation.

After a while he had to leave in order not to be late.  He had almost reached the school when he was overtaken by a boy from the English section of his own grade, about whom he knew nothing but that his name was Bergman.

“Have you heard,” cried Bergman when he was still several steps behind, although he and Keith had never exchanged a word before.  Keith turned in surprise.

“Three boys were drowned skating during the lunch hours,” continued Bergman breathlessly.  “Two were in my class—­Hill and Samson, you know.  The third, Dahlin, was in your own class.”

“Is Dahlin dead?” asked Keith blankly.  The thing seemed impossible to him.  He had been talking to Dahlin that very morning—­a tall boy, slow, self-possessed, older than most of the other pupils, and advanced for his age in everything but studies.

“He is,” said Bergman with emphasis.  “And so are the other two.  They are dragging for the bodies now.”

So that was what I saw those people doing out there, Keith thought.

“Little Moses was with them,” Bergman ran on.  “The Jew, you know.  We’ve always thought him a coward.  And he nearly went down, too, trying to save them.”