, ice is most conveniently cut and handled
when not more than fifteen or sixteen inches thick. That thickness, too,
when the cakes are cut twenty-six inches square, as usual, makes them
quite heavy enough for hoisting and packing in an ice-house.

Half a mile from the head of the lake, over deep, clear water, we had
been scraping and sweeping a large surface after every snow, in order to
have clear ice. Two or three times a week Addison ran down and tested
the thickness; and when it reached fifteen inches, we bestirred
ourselves at our new work.

None of us knew much about cutting ice; but we laid off a straight
base-line of a hundred feet, hitched old Sol to the new groover, and
marked off five hundred cakes. Addison and I then set to work with two
of our new ice-saws, and hauled out the cakes with the ice-tongs, while
Halstead and the old Squire loaded them on the long horse-sled,--sixteen
cakes to the load,--drew the ice home, and packed it away in the new
ice-house.

Although at first the sawing seemed easy, we soon found it tiresome, and
learned that two hundred cakes a day meant a hard day's work,
particularly after the saws lost their keen edge--for even ice will dull
a saw in a day or two. We had also to be pretty careful, for it was over
deep black water, and a cake when nearly sawed across is likely to break
off suddenly underfoot.

Hauling out the cakes with tongs, too, is somewhat hazardous on a
slippery ice margin. We beveled off a kind of inclined "slip" at one end
of the open water, and cut heel holes in the ice beside it, so that we
might stand more securely as we pulled the cakes out of the water.

For those first few days we had bright, calm weather, not very cold; we
got out five hundred cakes and drew them home to the ice-house without
accident.

The hardship came the next week, when several of our neighbors--who
always kept an eye on the old Squire's farming, and liked to follow his
lead--were beset by an ambition to start ice-houses. None of them had
either experience or tools. They wanted us to cut the ice for them.

We thought that was asking rather too much. Thereupon fourteen or
fifteen of them offered us two cents a cake to cut a year's supply for
each of them.

Now no one will ever get very rich cutting ice, sixteen inches thick, at
two cents a cake. But Addison and I thought it over, and asked the old
Squire's opinion. He said that we might take the new kit, and have all
we could m