ckly than the larger lake, which was just outside
the town, and where the best skating was. The smaller boys and girls
used the little pond, though sometimes they went to the lake when it was
perfectly safe.

After school Jan and Ted, taking their skates, went to the pond. There
they found many of their little friends.

"How's the ice?" asked Teddy of Harry Kent.

"Slippery as glass," was the answer.

"Then I'll fall down!" exclaimed Jan.

And she did, almost as soon as she stood up on her skates. But Ted and
Harry held her between them and before long she could strike out a
little. Then she remembered some of the directions her father had given
her when he taught her to skate the year before, and Jan was soon doing
fairly well. Ted was a pretty good skater for a boy of his age.

"You're doing fine, Curlytop!" called Harry Morris, one of the big boys
who had pulled Ted and Jan up the hill on his sled the previous night.
He had come to see how thick the ice was. "You're doing fine. But why
don't you hitch up your goat and make him pull you on the ice?"

"Oh, Ted, we could do that!" cried Janet, as the big boy passed on.

"Do what?"

"Harness Nicknack to a sled and make him give us a ride. Maybe he could
pull us over the snow as well as on the ice."

"We'll try it!" cried Teddy.

He took off his skates and hurried home, telling Janet to wait for him
at the pond, which was not far from the Martin house. In a little while
Teddy came back driving Nicknack hitched to Ted's sled. The goat pulled
the little boy along over the snow much more easily than he had hauled
the small wagon.

"This is great!" cried Ted. "I'm going to drive him on the ice now.
Giddap, Nicknack!"

Teddy guided the goat to the ice-covered pond. Nicknack took two or
three steps on the slippery place and then he suddenly fell down, the
sled, with Ted on it, gliding over his hind legs.

"Baa-a-a-a!" bleated Nicknack, as if he did not at all like this.

CHAPTER IV

THE SNOW HOUSE

"Oh, Teddy, you'll hurt Nicknack!" cried Janet, when she saw what had
happened.

"I didn't mean to," Ted answered, jumping off the sled. "He slipped on
the ice and I couldn't stop the sled."

"Help him get up," went on Jan. "He can't get up himself with that sled
on his hind legs."

Teddy pulled back the sled, but still Nicknack did not get up.

"Maybe one of his legs is broken," suggested Tom Taylor, a boy who lived
near the Martins.

"If it is