r bore properly, so the boys
swarmed over our pond, which was shallow and safe. Very few of them
could even hobble on skates, and those few carried the art no farther
than by cutting up the slides. But thaw came on, so that there was no
sliding, and then the young roughs amused themselves with stamping holes
in the soft ice with their hobnailed heels. When word came to us that
they were taking the stones off our wall and pitching them down on to
the soft ice below, to act as skaters' stumbling-blocks for the rest of
that hard winter which we expected, Jem's indignation was not greater
than mine. My father was not at home, and indeed, when we had complained
before, he rather snubbed us, and said that we could not want the whole
of the pond to ourselves, and that he had always lived quietly with his
neighbours and we must learn to do the same, and so forth. No action at
all calculated to assuage our thirst for revenge was likely to be taken
by him, so Jem and I held a council by Charlie's sofa, and it was a
council of war. At the end we all three solemnly shook hands, and
Charlie was left to write and despatch brief notes of summons to our
more distant school-mates, whilst Jem and I tucked up our trousers,
wound our comforters sternly round our throats, and went forth in
different directions to gather the rest.

(Having lately been reading about the Highlanders, who used to send
round a fiery cross when the clans were called to battle, I should have
liked to do so in this instance; but as some of the Academy boys were no
greater readers than Jem, they might not have known what it meant, so we
abandoned the notion.)

There was not an Academy boy worth speaking of who was in time for
dinner the following day; and several of them brought brothers or
cousins to the fray. By half-past twelve we had crept down the field
that was on the other side of our wall, and had hidden ourselves in
various corners of a cattle-shed, where a big cart and some sail-cloth
and a turnip heap provided us with ambush. By and by certain familiar
whoops and hullohs announced that the enemy was coming. One or two
bigger boys made for the dam (which I confess was a relief to us), but
our own particular foes advanced with a rush upon the wall.

"They hevn't coomed yet, hev they?" we heard the sexton's son say, as he
peeped over at our pond.

"Noa," was the reply. "It's not gone one yet."

"It's gone one by t' church. I yeard it as we was coming up