-fitting velvet sack; and, nearby, a pretty peasant
girl, Annie Bouman, jauntily attired in a coarse scarlet jacket and
a blue skirt just short enough to display the gray homespun hose to
advantage. Then there was the proud Rychie Korbes, whose father, Mynheer
van Korbes, was one of the leading men of Amsterdam; and, flocking
closely around her, Carl Schummel, Peter and Ludwig van Holp, Jacob
Poot, and a very small boy rejoicing in the tremendous name of
Voostenwalbert Schimmelpenninck. There were nearly twenty other boys
and girls in the party, and one and all seemed full of excitement and
frolic.

Up and down the canal within the space of a half mile they skated,
exerting their racing powers to the utmost. Often the swiftest among
them was seen to dodge from under the very nose of some pompous lawgiver
or doctor who, with folded arms, was skating leisurely toward the town;
or a chain of girls would suddenly break at the approach of a fat old
burgomaster who, with gold-headed cane poised in air, was puffing his
way to Amsterdam. Equipped in skates wonderful to behold, with their
superb strappings and dazzling runners curving over the instep and
topped with gilt balls, he would open his fat eyes a little if one of
the maidens chanced to drop him a curtsy but would not dare to bow in
return for fear of losing his balance.

Not only pleasure seekers and stately men of note were upon the canal.
There were workpeople, with weary eyes, hastening to their shops and
factories; market women with loads upon their heads; peddlers bending
with their packs; bargemen with shaggy hair and bleared faces, jostling
roughly on their way; kind-eyed clergymen speeding perhaps to the
bedsides of the dying; and, after a while, groups of children with
satchels slung over their shoulders, whizzing past, toward the distant
school. One and all wore skates except, indeed, a muffled-up farmer
whose queer cart bumped along on the margin of the canal.

Before long our merry boys and girls were almost lost in the confusion
of bright colors, the ceaseless motion, and the gleaming of skates
flashing back the sunlight. We might have known no more of them had not
the whole party suddenly come to a standstill and, grouping themselves
out of the way of the passersby, all talked at once to a pretty little
maiden, whom they had drawn from the tide of people flowing toward the
town.

"Oh, Katrinka!" they cried in one breath, "have you heard of it? The
ra