pple bee"
at the Murches'.

On the morning of the 30th of October we waked to find the ground white
with snow; several inches had fallen; but it went off, after a day or
two; the weather had grown quite cold, however. Ice formed nearly every
night. The cattle were now at the barns, but the sheep were still
running about the pastures and fields. On the night of the 5th of
November the upper part of the lake froze over, as well as the smaller
ponds in the vicinity. I found that the boys thereabouts knew how to
skate, and was not long in buying a pair of skates, myself. I had much
difficulty in learning to use them for several days; at length, I caught
the knack of it, and felt well repaid for a good many hard falls, when
at last I could glide away and keep up with Halse, Addison and Thomas
Edwards, who skated well. Even Theodora and Ellen could skate.

For a week that fall Lake Pennesseewassee was grand skating ground.
Parties of boys from a distance came there every evening and built
bonfires on the shore to enliven the scene.

I think that it was the third day before Thanksgiving that eight of us
went to the lake, at about four in the afternoon, to have an hour of
skating before dark. We found Alfred Batchelder there in advance of us.
As Alfred did not now speak to our boys, he kept a little aloof from us.

Near the head of the lake is an island and above it a bog. We had skated
around the head of the lake, and keeping to the east side of the island,
circled about it, and were coming down on the west side along an arm,
some two hundred yards wide, where there was known to be deep water. We
thought the ice perfectly firm and safe there, since that on the east
side of the island, over which we had just skated, had proved so. All of
us were at full racing speed, and Alfred was keeping six or eight rods
further out, but parallel with us. Suddenly we heard a crash and saw
Alfred go down. The water gushed up around him.

There was no premonitory cracking or yielding. The ice broke on the
instant; and so rapidly was he moving that a hole twelve or fifteen feet
long was torn by the sheer force with which he went against it. As he
fell through, he went under once, but luckily came up in the hole he had
made, and got his hands and arms on the edges of the ice, which,
however, kept bending down and breaking off. The breaking and his fall
were so sudden that he had not even time to cry out till he came up and
caught hold of th