condition for more than a week. Not
more than four inches of snow had fallen, but all the boys knew that the
season gave promise of more snow ere long.

As Dick & Co. skated along the number of other skaters became fewer. At
last they reached a part of the river where they had the ice all to
themselves.

"There's Payson's orchard, Greg," sang out Dave Darrin. "The place where
you got grabbed last fall, by Dexter and Driggs, and carried off to be
shut up in that cave."

"Say, we ought to hunt up that cave, fellows," called Greg. "Whee! It
might make a bully place for a winter camp. Now, that we've got the two
weeks and more of holiday vacation, wouldn't it be fine to slip off and
camp a few days in that cave?"

"Nothing doing," retorted Tom Reade.

"Why not?" Dan asked.

"You remember that I went off, yesterday after school, on a sleigh ride
with Jim Foley?"

"Yes."

"Well, we went by that cave," Tom continued. "Nothing would do but that
we stop. Jim had a lantern on the sleigh. We lit the lantern and got
into the cave. Whew! We nearly got drowned. I meant to tell you fellows
about it, but forgot it."

"How did you come near getting drowned in a cave?" Greg demanded.

"Why, the outlandish place isn't weather-tight," responded Tom. "You
know, the flooring slopes slightly upward from the entrance. There are a
lot of cracks that rain and snow-water leak through. It was all little
rivulets inside the place. Camp? Huh! It'd make a better extra
reservoir for the town water-works, that place would!"

"Too bad!" muttered Greg. "I have had a notion that it would be huge fun
to camp out in such a place."

"I've got another idea about that," spoke up Dan.

"Fire away!" begged Reade.

"A cousin of mine who visited me last summer told me about the kind of
camp he and some of his chums had. It was a sort of manufactured cave.
The fellows dug an oblong hole in the ground. Just like a cellar in
shape, you know. It was eight feet wide and twelve feet long. When they
had it all dug out the fellows laid boards over the hole for a roof.
Then they piled dirt back on top of the boards, and on top of the dirt
they laid the sods that they first dug up. At a corner in one end the
fellows left a square hole in the roof, to use for an entrance. For a
door they made a square board cover to fit over the entrance hole. At
the upper end of the cave they dug into the dirt wall and made a stove.
They dug another hole down from above