after they had climbed the fence, they
came to a little graveled walk that was drier.

"Bet you I can throw a stone farther than any of you," said Carleton
Marsh.

"Bet you can't!" retorted Perry Phelps.

Then every one had to toss a stone into the brook. The water went so
fast it was hard to tell whose stone went farthest, for none landed
across the brook. Still, in a way this was satisfactory, for each boy
was sure that his stone had won.

"Well, come on, if you're going to explore," said Nelson Baker. "What
are you staring at, Sunny Boy?"

"Ice," said Sunny Boy, pointing up the stream. "Isn't that ice all
over everything?"

The boys looked. A little distance away the ground seemed to be
covered with cakes of ice.

"Hurry up!" shouted Perry. "It's an ice field. We can have heaps of
fun playing."

The others hurried after Perry, and when they came to the field where
the ice was they found that the brook was almost a river at this point.
It had cut a wide, new gash in the bank and had overflowed, leaving mud
and water and ice in great quantities and cutting the trunks of little
trees that stood in the way. The boys scrambled up on the ice and
pretended that they were at the North Pole.

"I'll be the savage Eskimo and chase you white men," said Carleton.

"Are Eskimos savage?" asked Sunny Boy doubtfully. "They don't look
savage in the geography book. They look fat."

"Of course they are savage," said Carleton. "Anybody who lives at the
North Pole is savage. Now when I chase you, you have to jump."

Carleton made an awful face, such as he thought a savage Eskimo would
make, and ran directly toward Sunny Boy, who jumped from his cake of
ice to the ground. But instead of landing on the ground, he landed in
water! Ice-cold water and up to his knees! And at that moment the ice
on which Carleton stood began to rock.

"The brook!" gasped Sunny Boy. "It's running over again! It's inside
my rubber boots!"

The boys jumped from the ice cakes on which they stood, and those who
had only rubbers on were wet at once to the knees.

"We'll be drowned!" cried Perry Phelps.

Sunny Boy saw a barn in the next field, and he thought if they could
only reach that they would be safe.

"We'll all take hold of hands," he said quickly. "And don't anybody
let go. There's a barn up there, and we can go and stay in that. Bob
will come and find us, I know he will."

The water kept rising higher and higher,