The Frozen Deep

his wood!” He attacked the bed-place with the ax, like a man who well knew the use of his instrument. “Oh me!” he thought, sadly, “if I had only been born a ca

not able to realize. The state of his own mind was fast becoming a puzzle to him.“More carving,” he said to himself. “That’s the way these young idlers employ their long hours. F. A.? Those must be his initials — Frank Aldersley. Who carved the letters on the other plank? Frank Aldersley, too?”He turned the piece of wood in his hand nearer to the light, and looked lower down it. More carving again, lower down! Under the initials F. A. were two more letters — C. B.“C. B.?” he repeated to himself. “His sweet heart’s initials, I suppose? Of course — at his age — his sweetheart’s initials.”He paused once more. A spasm of inner pain showed the shadow of its mysterious passage, outwardly on his face.“Her cipher is C. B.,” he said, in low, broken tones. “C. B.— Clara Burnham.”He waited, with the plank in his hand; repeating the name over and over again, as if it was a question he was putting to himself.“Clara Burnham? Clara Burnham?”He dropped the plank, and turned deadly pale in a moment. His eyes wandered furtively backward and forward between the strip of wood on the floor and the half-demolished berth. “Oh, God! what has come to me now?” he said to himself, in a whisper. He snatched up the ax, with a strange cry — something between rage and terror. He tried