ice will be covered. Of course
you can scrape clean a small place, but it will be hard work. So get all
the skating you can while it's good."

This the boys did, that day and the next. But the following morning,
when they awakened and looked from the windows, they saw the ground
white with snow, and more flakes coming down.

"Hurray!" cried Tom. "Now we can have fun coasting!"

"And maybe we can make a toboggan slide!" added Ted.

"I've seen them," remarked Harry, "but I was never on one."

"We had a wooden one in our yard, but we had to put candle grease on our
sled runners first," Ted explained. "It would be great if we could make
a regular toboggan slide."

"Let's ask Uncle Toby," suggested Janet.

Uncle Toby laughed in jolly fashion as the Curlytops and their playmates
swarmed around him in the cozy cabin.

"A toboggan slide, eh?" he cried. "Well, I don't see why you can't have
one, and you don't need to build it of wood, either, for there's a good
hill not far away. But how would you like to coast on a regular toboggan
instead of your sleds?"

"Oh, could we?" shouted Ted.

"I guess so," was the answer. "There's a French Canadian who lives not
far away, and he has a big toboggan. We'll go over in the auto and see
if he'll let us take it. I used to have one out here, but I find that
it's broken."

"Oh, what fun we'll have!" sang Janet, and the others joined in the
chorus of joy.

It kept on snowing, but they could journey out in the big, closed
automobile even with the storm all about, and this they soon did.

"But if we get the toboggan how can we get it in here? There isn't much
room," remarked Ted, for the children and Uncle Toby almost filled the
big machine.

"Oh, we'll tie it on behind and pull it over," said Uncle Toby. "A
toboggan can go faster than any auto."

"I ride on it!" said Trouble, and the others laughed, for of course he
didn't know what he was talking about.

The road to the cabin of the French Canadian lumberman who owned the big
toboggan ran past the lonely shack where Uncle Toby had once stopped for
water and from which the strange man had run away. As they neared this
cabin again Ted asked:

"I wonder if that man is in there now?"

"I don't know," said Uncle Toby. "But I think I'll take a look. Jim
Nelson and I meant to do it before this, but we haven't had a chance. We
don't want any tramps living in our woods."

He stopped the machine near the cabin and got out. The