ice.

Not that they are more clever with their legs than the boys of other
counties; but from the fact that skating has always been a favourite
pastime with them, and that when others were longing for a bit of
bearing ice, and getting it sometimes in a crowded place, the marsh and
fen lads had miles of clear bright surface, over which they could career
as a swallow flies.

Away and away over the open ice, unmarked before by skate-iron and
looking black as hardened unpolished steel, stroke for stroke, stroke
for stroke, the wind whistling by them, and the ominous cracking
forgotten as they dashed on past reed-bed and bog-clump, keeping to the
open water where they had so often been by punt.

"His reed-stack must be on fire," panted Dick as they dashed on.

"Ay, and his peat-stack and cottage too," shouted Tom so as to be heard
above the ringing of their skates. "Oh, Dick, if I only knew who it was
did these things I think I could kill him!"

Dick was silent for a minute, for his companion's words jarred upon him.

"How much farther is it?" he said at last.

"Good mile and a half," said Tom; "but it's fine going. I say, look at
the golden smoke. It must be at Dave's, eh?"

"Yes, it's there, sure enough. Oh, Tom, suppose some one were to burn
down the duck 'coy!"

"It wouldn't burn so as to do much harm. Look, there goes a flock of
plovers."

They could just catch the gleam of the wings in the dark night, as the
great flock, evidently startled by the strange glare, swept by.

"I say!" cried Dick, as they dashed on as rapidly as the birds
themselves.

"What is it?"

"Suppose poor Dave--"

"Oh, don't think things like that!" cried Tom with a shudder. "He'd be
clever enough to get out. Come along. Look at the sparks."

What Tom called sparks were glowing flakes of fire which floated on,
glittering against the black sky, and so furiously was the fire burning
that it seemed as if something far more than the hut and stacks of the
decoy-man must be ablaze.

And now they had to curve off some distance to the right, for they came
upon an embayment of the mere, so well sheltered from the icy blast that
to have persevered in skating over the very thin ice must have meant
serious accident to one, probably to both.

For a long time past the ice had been blushing, as it were, with the
warm glow from the sky; but now, as they drew nearer and passed a little
copse of willows, they glided full into the view of