"Mercy!" Agnes murmured, with a gay little laugh. "Lucky Trix Severn doesn't come up here. She uses rice powder dreadfully, and folks would think she was being frost-bitten."

"Uh-huh!" agreed Neale.

"But you haven't told me how they fish," said the girl, as they approached nearer to the huts and she was able to walk better.

"Through the ice of course," he laughed. "Only you don't see the holes. They are inside the huts."

"You don't mean it, Neale?"

"To be sure I mean it! Some of those big shanties house whole families. You see there are children and dogs. They have pot stoves which warm the huts to a certain degree, and on which they cook. And they have bunks built against the walls, with plenty of bedding."

"Why, I should think they would get their death of cold!" gasped the girl.

"That's just what they don't get," Neale rejoined. "You can bet there are no 'white plague' patients here. This atmosphere will kill tubercular germs like a hammer kills a flea."

"Goodness, Neale!" giggled Agnes. "Did you ever kill a flea with a hammer?"

"Yep. Sand-flea," he a.s.sured her, grinning. "Oh! I'm one quick lad, Aggie."

She really thought he was joking, however, until she had looked into two or three of the huts. People really did live in them, as she saw.

In the middle of the plank floors was a well, with open water kept clear of frost. The set-lines were fastened to pegs in the planks and the "flags" announced when a fish was on the hook.

A smiling woman, done up like an Eskimo, invited them into one shack.

She had evidently not seen the scooter arrive from down the lake and thought the boy and girl had walked out from c.o.xford.

"h.e.l.lo!" she said. "Goin' to try your hands at fishin'? You're town folks, ain't you?"

"Yes," said Agnes, politely. "We come from Milton."

"Lawsy! That's a fur ways," said the woman. She was peeling potatoes, and a kettle was boiling on the stove at one side. The visitors knew by the odor that there was corned beef in the pot. "You goin' to try your hands?" the woman repeated.

"No," said Neale. "We are with a party that is going up to Red Deer Lodge."

"Oh! That's the Birdsall place. You can't git up there tonight. It's too fur."

"I guess we shall stay in c.o.xford," admitted Neale.

"Didn't know but you an' your sister wanted to fish. Old Manny c.o.x got ketched with rheumatics so that he had to give up fishin' this season.

I can hire you his shanty."

"No, thank you!" murmured Agnes, her eyes round with interest.

"I let it for a week or more to two gals," said the woman complacently. "Got five dollars out of 'em for Manny. He'll be needin'

the money. Better stay awhile and try the fishin'."

"Goodness! Two girls alone?" asked Agnes.

"Yes. Younger'n you are, too. But they knowed their way around, I guess," said the woman. "Good lookin' gals. Nice clo'es. Town folks, I guess. Mebbe they wasn't older'n my Bob, and he's just turned twelve."

"Twelve years old! And two girls alone?" murmured Agnes.

"Oh, there ain't n.o.body to hurt you here. We don't never need no constable out here on the ice. There's plenty of women folks--Miz'

Ashtable, and Hank Crummet's wife, and Mary Boley and her boys. Oh, lots o' women here. We can help make money in the winter.

"There! See that set-line bob?"

She dropped the potato she was paring and crossed to the well. One of the flags had dipped. With a strong hand she reeled in the wet line.

At its end was a big pickerel--the biggest pickerel the visitors had ever seen.

"There!" exclaimed the woman. "Sorry I didn't git that before Joe Jagson went with his load of fish. That's four pound if it weighs an ounce."

She shook the flopping fish off the hook into a basket and then hung the basket outside the door. In the frosty air the fish did not need to be packed in ice. It would literally be ice within a very few minutes.

"Got to hang 'em up to keep the dogs from gettin' them," said the woman, rebaiting the hook and then returning to her potato paring.

"Can't leave 'em in a creel in the water, neither; pike would come along an' eat 'em clean to the bone."

"Oh!" gasped Agnes.

"Yes. Regular cannibals, them pike," said the woman. "But all big fish will eat little ones."

"What kind of fish do you catch?" Neale asked.

"Pickerel and pike, whitebait (we calls 'em that), perch, some lake ba.s.s and once in a while a lake trout. Trout's out o' season. We don't durst sell 'em. But we eat 'em. They ain't no 'season,' I tell 'em, for a boy's appet.i.te; and I got three boys and my man to feed."

At that moment there was a great shouting and barking of dogs outside, and Neale and Agnes went out of the hut to learn what it meant. The Corner House girl whispered to the boy:

"What do you think about those two twelve year old girls coming here to stay and fish through the ice?"

"Great little sports," commented Neale.

"Well," exclaimed Agnes, "that's being too much of a sport, if you ask me!"

CHAPTER IX

A COLD SCENT

The barking of the dogs was in answer to the booming note that Tom Jonah sent echoing across the ice. Agnes and Neale found that the two big ice-boats were near at hand.

As one of the crew of Mr. Howbridge's boat owned the scooter that Neale and Agnes had come up the lake on, that owner wished to recover his abandoned ice-boat. Besides, it was not more than two miles over the ice to c.o.xford, and the wind was going down with the sun. The big boats would have made slow work of it beating in to the slab-town on the western sh.o.r.e of the lake.

Neale and Agnes ran out across the ice to meet their friends. Most of the party were glad indeed to get on their feet, for the ride up the lake had been a cold one.

In fact, Tess could scarcely walk when she got out of her seat, and Dot tumbled right down on the ice, almost weeping.

"I--I guess I haven't got any feet," the smallest Corner House girl half sobbed. "I can't feel 'em."