had something to do for his mother, just as Owen had
admitted was the cause of his absence from the ice that same
afternoon.

Usually boys like to linger on the ice until long after the shades of
night have settled down and time for supper is perilously near. With
a jolly bonfire blazing on the bank, and the skaters going and coming
all the while, the prospect is so alluring that it is indeed
difficult for any lad to break away. And the father who has not
forgotten his own shortcomings of long ago is apt to wisely overlook
some such transgression of parental authority, when the ice beckons,
and, in spite of good intentions, all outdoors seems to grip a fellow
in fetters of steel.

Some little time later Hugh might have been seen in a neighbor's
family sleigh heading out of town. There was plenty of snow for this
sort of thing, though the ice had been kept well cleared through the
use of brooms handled by many willing hands. The skating had not
been injured in the least, for they flooded the pond each night
afresh, giving it a glittering new surface by morning.

Hugh had to go a couple of miles out. He, too, was bound for a farm,
to fetch back a sack of potatoes that his mother had purchased, and
which should have been delivered before then, only that the one horse
on the place had taken a notion to fall sick, and that rendered the
farmer helpless.

It was already well on toward sunset when Hugh started out. He
expected to be overtaken by twilight before getting back home; but
that was a small matter, since he knew the road very well, and with
the snow on the ground it would not be really dark at any time.

It was certainly bitter cold. Hugh wore warm gloves especially
suited for driving, or any purpose when the zero mark was approached
by the mercury in the tube of the thermometer. He also kept his ears
well muffled up by means of a toque of dark blue worsted, which he
wore under his ordinary cap.

As he had on a heavy wool-lined pea-jacket that buttoned close up
under his chin the boy found nothing to complain about in that cold
atmosphere, for his blood coursed through his veins with all the
richness of healthy youth.

"But all the same," he was telling himself, as he passed an humble
cottage where, through a dingy window, a lone lamp could be seen; and
some children gathered about the kitchen stove, "I'm thinking this
bracing weather that we boys have wanted to see so much, is pretty
hard on poor f