hat sort of a
winter we're going to get, says such a sign stands for cold and clear
to-morrow after that kind of a sunset. Red means warmer, you know."

"I only hope it keeps on for forty-eight hours more, that's all I can
say, Hugh. This being Thursday, it would fetch us to Saturday. I
understand they're not meaning to let a single pair of steel runners
on the baseball park, to mark the smooth surface of the new ice,
until Saturday morning."

"Which will be a fine thing for our hockey try-out with the scratch
Seven, eh, Thad?"

"We want to test our team play before going up against the boys of
Keyport High, that's a fact; and Scranton can put up a hard fighting
bunch of irregulars. There are some mighty clever hockey players in
and out of the high school, who are not on our Seven. I guess there
ought to be a pretty lively game on Saturday; and there will be if
several fellows I could mention line up against us."

The two boys who had just left the home of a schoolmate named Horatio
Juggins were great friends. Although Hugh Morgan had seemed to jump
into popular leadership among the boys of Scranton, soon after his
folks came to reside in the town, he and Thad Stevens had become
almost inseparables.

Indeed, some of the fellows often regarded them as "Damon and
Pythias," or on occasions it might be "David and Jonathan." Both
were of an athletic turn, and took prominent parts in all baseball
games, and other strenuous outdoor sports indulged in by the boys of
Scranton High; a record of which will be found in the several
preceding books of this series, to which the new reader is referred,
if he feels any curiosity concerning the earlier doings of this
lively bunch.

Hugh was cool and calm in times when his chum would show visible
signs of great excitement. He had drilled himself to control his
temper under provocation, until he felt master of himself.

It was the 10th of January, and thus far the opportunities for
skating that had come to the young people of that section of country
where Scranton was located, had been almost nil; which would account
for the enthusiasm of the lads when Thad announced how rapidly the
thermometer was giving promise of a severe cold spell.

Scranton had two keen rivals for athletic honors. Allandale and
Belleville High fellows had given them a hard run of it before they
carried off the championship pennant of the county in baseball the
preceding summer.

Then, in the lat