The Ice Queen Part 24

"I'm 'fraid we ain't any too scrumptious," Tug replied, off-hand, "but you could hardly expect it, I s'pose, seein' we've been a month or more on the ice."

"A month on the ice! How? Where?"

So they told him, each one talking a little, but making a short story of it. He did not interrupt by any "I swannys!" as the old farmer had, but kept his eyes--Katy thought they were the sharpest eyes she had ever seen--upon each speaker's face, as if committing every word to memory.

"That's a mighty good story," he said. "What are you going to do now?"

"We shall go on to my uncle's in Cleveland right away, that is, if we have money enough to take us there."

"I suppose you wouldn't object to earning a little more money, then?"

the stranger remarked, interrogatively.

"Nothing would suit Tug and me better," Aleck rejoined. "Do you know how we can do it? My name is Aleck Kincaid, and this promising youth here is Thucydides, otherwise 'Tug,' Montgomery. This is my sister Katy, and the youngster is my brother Jim."

"I am Harry Porter," the young man announced, shaking hands with them all, "and I am glad to get acquainted with you. Now, sit down a minute, and I'll make you a proposition. I live in New York city, and am on the staff of _The Times_, but am out here for a few days on a visit to my father. Your adventures would make a capital story--what we call a 'sensation'--in that newspaper. Do you think you could write it out in good shape?"

"I'm afraid not, sir," Aleck said. "I've never felt that I had any faculty in that direction--but I could make you an automatic bra.s.s valve if you wanted it!"

"Could you? That's more than I could do. Well, now, you see, you have the facts, but you must make use of my training to put them into readable shape, so that the story will be worth money to some newspaper. I can see how two or three very good articles, indeed, can be made, and what I propose is this: you come to a boarding-house, kept by a friend of mine, in Port Linton, and stay there as long as is necessary to tell me everything. Then I can write it all into a connected story, and we'll divide the profits."

"But supposing _The Times_ shouldn't want to print it?"

"I'll take care of that," Mr. Porter replied.

"But we would have to wait a good while to get the money back, wouldn't we?" Aleck asked. "And we want it now worse than we ever shall again, probably."

"Ye--es, that's a difficulty," Mr. Porter admitted, slowly. Then he thought over it a minute or two in silence. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said at last, "and I think I shall be safe. I estimate that you can give me facts enough for ten or twelve columns--say ten; and that for this 'special and exclusive' they will pay me twenty dollars, or more, a column. So if you are willing to take one hundred dollars for your information, I'll run the risk of getting that back and another hundred on top of it for the labor of writing."

"I am sure that we shall be very glad to do it if you think you are not cheating yourself."

"That's _my_ lookout," said the newspaper man. "And, now, Miss Kincaid, if you will take a seat in the boat, I think we should all regard it as a pleasure to draw you the rest of the way, for I mean to bear a hand at dragging."

Katy demurred, but all the boys insisted, so she unstrapped her skates, nestled warmly into the boat, where Mr. Porter folded his fur-trimmed coat about her, saying he should be too warm with skating to wear it, and they set off gayly.

The plan thus made upon the ice was fully carried out, beginning that very evening, which was Friday; and on Tuesday morning Mr. Porter gave Tug twenty-five dollars and Aleck seventy-five--the latter "for the family," as he said. Besides this, they sold their scow for fifteen dollars, feeling that they had a right to do so, since, if the fishermen who had left it on the island (the name and position of which they learned) should ever return for it, they would find left in its place the _Red Erik_.

The goods that they cared to keep were packed and sent on to Cleveland by freight. At nine o'clock on Tuesday morning, therefore, the four adventurers--yes, _five_, for Rex was not forgotten--feeling themselves already famous in New York, and hence around the whole world, took the train for Cleveland, and reached their uncle's house in time for his one-o'clock dinner. All were heartily welcomed, and told their adventures again and again--in fact, until they became so thoroughly tired of being "trotted out" that Tug one day declared that he almost wished he had never left the island.

Chapter x.x.xIV.

A HAPPY CONCLUSION.

All the members of our party, to whose courage and independence of mind my story has borne witness, immediately and anxiously exerted themselves to relieve their hospitable relative of the burden of their support, and it was not long before they succeeded.

Aleck and Tug found profitable work to do. Katy was eager to resume her studies, and therefore gladly accepted an invitation to stay with her aunt and help her in her sewing before and after school-hours. Jim roomed with his brother, and went to school also, acting morning and evening as an office-boy for a lawyer to whom Mr. Porter had given him a letter of introduction.

To prepare themselves for these different stations used up their stock of money, but by close economy they came through without any debt--yes, even with some money left--just nineteen cents among them all! To this Tug's pocket contributed nothing, but he was happy.

"There's one great comfort in being 'dead broke,'" he told them. "You know precisely where you are, and that matters can get no worse. You are ready to begin all new again."

This sense of beginning anew was a tonic that strengthened the hearts of all of them; for each one knew that, although he had no money, his feet were planted firmly on the first round of the ladder which, if steadily climbed, might lead to prosperity.

With this satisfactory state of things the story might end, but twenty years and more have pa.s.sed since that hard winter which made their journey to the island and escape from it possible; twenty years, in which no such hard winter has been seen again. Aleck is manager and part owner of a manufactory of gas-fixtures and bra.s.s fittings in Pittsburgh, and Jim is his cashier. Tug lives in Cleveland, where he is busy, as an inventor, and expects some day to be made rich by his improvements in railway-brakes and in oil-pumping machinery; but n.o.body addresses him as "Tug" except his wife (whom _he_ calls Katy) and his little boy, who never tires of hearing how papa and mamma and Uncle Aleck went adrift on an ice-floe in Lake Erie.