poor boys in Oakdale, who stood on the bank waiting to be hired.

"Now, we'll have a lesson," exclaimed David when they had reached the
starting point again, while the others lost themselves in the crowd. Anne
was a good pupil, but she was soon tired and sat down on a bench near the
bank.

"Do go and have a good skate yourself, David," she insisted. "I'll rest
for awhile and look on."

But it was far too cold to sit still.

"I'll give myself a lesson," she said. "This is a quiet spot. All the
others seem to have skated up to the other end."

As she was carefully taking the strokes David had taught her, with an
occasional struggle to keep her balance, she heard a great shouting behind
her. The next instant, some one had seized her by the hand.

"Keep your feet together!" was shouted in her ear, and she found herself
going like the wind at the end of a long line of girls. They were juniors,
she saw at once, and it was Julia Crosby at the whip end who had seized
her by the hand.

Anne closed her eyes. They were going at a tremendous rate of speed, it
seemed to her, like a comet shooting through the air. Then, suddenly, the
head of the comet stood still and the tail swung around it, and Anne, who
represented the very tip of the tail and who hardly reached to Julia
Crosby's shoulder, felt herself carried along with such velocity that the
breath left her body, her knees gave way and she fell down in a limp