miles away.

"Rip Van Winkle," said Sam; "sure. I am that same old fellow, to judge
by the change since I travelled over this icy lake."

Great indeed was the transformation which the sun and south wind had
made. While there was still plenty of good ice, there were many dark,
treacherous spots all around, which had so crystallised by the sun's
rays that, although the ice there was still three or four feet thick, it
was unsafe for dogs or boy. Fortunately, dogs become very wise in this
matter, and so Spitfire carefully wended his way among these dangerous
places, cautiously keeping where the ice was firm and solid. Rapid
travelling was in some places impossible, for fear of running into a bit
of rotten ice.

Suddenly Sam was stopped by coming to a long stretch of open water. It
was a place where, during one of the coldest nights, the ice had
suddenly burst open with a report like a great cannon. The crack then
made was about twenty or thirty feet wide and some miles in length. So
intense was the cold that the ice in a few hours formed again on the
water which was in this great opening. But when these great breaks in
the thick ice occur, toward the end of the winter, the new ice that
forms is never so thick as is the rest, and so when the spring warmth
comes it is the first to disappear. It was to one of these open seams
that Sam had now come. In the early hours of the morning it had been
covered with ice sufficiently strong to hold him, but now it was full of
broken fragments that rose and fell on the water that was stirred up by
the strong south wind. As far as the eye could reach north and south
extended this open channel. Sam was perplexed, and hardly knew what to
do. To drive across was impossible, as the seam was much wider than his
cariole was long. To wait until the night frost again froze up the
water was a risk, as to judge by the warm south wind then blowing, if it
so continued there would be no freezing of any consequence. Thus Sam
was troubled and annoyed at having allowed himself to be thus caught,
especially as he and the other boys had heard Mr Ross and the Indians
refer to just such experiences. With his vexation at having thus had
his trail so suddenly broken, there flashed into his memory the stories
of how some of the Indians, when in just such dangerous places, had
escaped by making great rafts of the ice and on them floating across the
open water. No sooner had this thought come t