ion, and people
hurried along with smiling faces, although they had to rub their noses
and cheeks frequently to keep them from freezing.

Keith was never sensitive about his face, but his hands were buried
deeply in his coat pockets. His schoolbooks were tied up in a leather
thong and slung over his shoulder like a knapsack.

At the Sluice he stopped and looked long at the people skating merrily
on the rinks down on the ice of the lake between the Corn Harbour and
the railway bridge. A number of boys near his own age were among the
rest having a good time. Many of the boys brought their skates to school
and never went home for lunch, but just ate a couple of sandwiches in
order to spend as much as possible of the noonday pause on the ice.
Keith had asked permission to do the same, but the refusal had been
peremptory. The fact was that he was granted little or no chance to use
his new skates. Once in a while he got leave, after begging long and
hard, to run over to the rinks at the New Bridge Harbour, in the North
End, for a brief while in the late afternoon. Most of the time even that
scant leave was denied him. To his mother's general disinclination to
let him out of sight was added her dread that he might fall into the
water and get drowned. He promised by everything sacred that he would
not leave the rink, which she ought to know was perfectly safe, but her
morbid fears would not listen to reason. More and more he was beginning
to give up asking even. The disappointment of a refusal was too bitter
to be borne often.

As he stood leaning against the bridge railings, his eyes strayed
farther and farther along the surface of the lake, which lay frozen as
far out as he could see. There were rinks on the other side of the
railway bridge, too, and here and there he noticed isolated black
figures gliding along the unswept spaces outside the rinks. Suddenly he
caught sight of a large gathering of people very far out. They were
moving slowly toward the shore, and evidently they were held together by
some common purpose. He wondered what they could be doing out there, far
beyond the last rink, but the distance was too great to give him any
basis for speculation.

After a while he had to leave in order not to be late. He had almost
reached the school when he was overtaken by a boy from the English
section of his own grade, about whom he knew nothing but that his name
was Bergman.

"Have you heard," cried Bergman when he w