ting as hard as he could, could not stop himself at
once, but went on, straight for the hole through which his sister had
slipped.

"Stop! Stop!" yelled Tom, waving his hands at Ted. "Stop!"

Ted tried to, digging the back point of his skate into the ice as he had
seen other skaters do when they wanted to stop quickly. But he was going
too fast to come to a halt soon enough, and it looked as though he,
also, would go into the water.

"Fall down and slide! Fall down!" cried a bigger boy who had come over
to see if his own little brother was all right on the pond.

Ted understood what this boy meant. By falling down on the ice and
sliding, he would not go as fast, and he might stop before he got to the
hole where the black water looked so cold and wet.

Flinging his feet from under him Ted dropped full length on the frozen
pond, but still he felt himself sliding toward the hole. He could see
Janet now. She was trying to stand up and she was crying and sobbing.

CHAPTER X

THANKSGIVING

"Look out, Teddy! Look out, or you'll fall in same as I did!"

This is what Janet Martin called to her brother as she saw him sliding
toward her when she was in the pond where she had broken through the
ice. She stopped crying and shivering from the icy water long enough to
say that.

"Stop, Teddy! Stop!" she shouted.

"I'm tryin' to!" he answered. He pressed hard with his mittened hands on
the smooth ice on which he had thrown himself. It was very slippery. He
was sliding ahead feet first and he could lift up his head and look at
his sister.

Luckily the water was not deep in the pond--hardly over Janet's
knees--and when she had fallen through the ice she had managed to stand
up. Her feet, with the skates still on them, were down in the soft mud
and ooze of the pond, the bottom of which had not frozen.

"I can't stop!" yelled Teddy, and it did seem as though he would go into
the water also. But he stopped just in time, far enough away from the
hole to prevent his going through the ice, which had cracked in three or
more places.

"Crawl back to shore!" yelled the big boy, named Ford Henderson, who had
come to look after his own little brother, whom he found safe. "Crawl
back to shore, Curlytop. Don't stand up, or you might fall down where
the ice is thin and crack a hole in it. Crawl back to shore!"

"But I want to help Janet!" said Teddy, who was almost ready to cry
himself, since he saw in what plight his sister