etters of iron. The land gray; the sky
steel; the wind a dagger. The trees, leafless and stark, rattled their
shriveled boughs together in that wind.

It met you at corners and froze the words out of your mouth; it whistled
a low, fiendish, malignant whistle round the houses; as vicious and
little louder than the buzz of a mosquito. It swept, thin, keen and
cutting, down the Koenigsallee, and blew fine black dust into one's face.

It cut up the skaters upon the pond in the Neue Anlage, which was in the
center of the town, and comparatively sheltered; but it was in its glory
whistling across the flat fields leading to the great skating-ground of
Elberthal in general--the Schwanenspiegel at the Grafenbergerdahl.

The Grafenberg was a low chain of what, for want of a better name, may
be called hills, lying to the north of Elberthal. The country all around
this unfortunate apology for a range of hills was, if possible, flatter
than ever. The Grafenbergerdahl was, properly, no "dale" at all, but a
broad plain of meadows, with the railway cutting them at one point, then
diverging and running on under the Grafenberg.

One vast meadow which lay, if possible, a trifle lower than the rest,
was flooded regularly by the autumn rains, but not deeply. It was frozen
over now, and formed a model skating place, and so, apparently, thought
the townspeople, for they came out, singly or in bodies, and from nine
in the morning till dusk the place was crowded, and the merry music of
the iron on the ice ceased not for a second.

I discovered this place of resort by accident one day when I was taking
a constitutional, and found myself upon the borders of the great frozen
mere covered with skaters. I stood looking at them, and my blood warmed
at the sight. If there were one thing--one accomplishment upon which I
prided myself, it was this very one--skating.

In a drawing-room I might feel awkward--confused among clever people,
bashful among accomplished ones; shy about music and painting, diffident
as to my voice, and deprecatory in spirit as to the etiquette to be
observed at a dinner-party. Give me my skates and put me on a sheet of
ice, and I was at home.

As I paused and watched the skaters, it struck me that there was no
reason at all why I should deny myself that seasonable enjoyment. I had
my skates, and the mere was large enough to hold me as well as the
others--indeed, I saw in the distance great tracts of virgin ice to
which no