Then, suddenly, the Forecaster pointed ahead. "There's something caught in that tree!" he said. In another minute the kite wire could be seen. It had hooked its coils into a bale of barbed wire, and in trying to lift this had entangled the bale in the branches. As though he were starting for a hundred yard dash, Monroe sped ahead. Grimly, Bob tried to catch up to him, but it was like a bull-dog chasing a deer. Tom, his face in the tense grin of exhaustion, struggled bravely, but dropped behind step by step. Monroe was within fifty feet of the tree when a sudden thought struck him. He slowed down, and as Bob caught up to him, said in a low voice: "Tom's made a great run! Let him be the first to get there." Bob nodded. As the pace slowed down, Tom, his gait a little staggering, caught up with the other two and passed them. He reached the tree first and looked up. "My kites!" he cried. "And I got the amateur record!" and he collapsed on the ground at the foot of the tree, worn out but supremely happy. With the approach of winter, kite-flying became less popular as a sport, but two or three times a month Tom sent up one of his kites with the meteorograph, and the observations were faithfully forwarded to Osborne, whose original gift of the two kites had been the stimulus to the Mississippi League of the Weather. The first few flakes of snow turned the attention of the boys to an entirely new line of weather observations. Many and many a time had the boys noticed the strange shapes of snow-flakes, but without paying much attention to them. On the first Saturday after the light snow-fall, however, three different boys brought in rough drawings of star-like and feather-like snow forms that they had noticed. "I've been wondering," said Anton, thoughtfully, "what makes snow-flakes take those shapes? Hail comes down in lumps, and rain-drops must be round, because when you see the first heavy drops of a shower they make round blobs on the ground with pointed splashes at the side." "A snow-flake," the meteorologist replied, "is a collection of icy crystals. If you could look at one under the microscope, Anton, you'd see that every little projection that goes to make up the shape of the flake, is a six-sided crystal. You've eaten barley-sugar from a string some time, haven't you?" "Sure!" said several of the boys, and one added, "Mother often makes it." "How does she make it?" queried the Forecaster. "Melts up some sugar and water and, as when it begins to cool off, she hangs a string in the middle of the pot and the sugar settles on that." "It settles in regular shapes, doesn't it?" "Yes." "Well, those are crystals. When water cools into ice, boys, it does the same thing. Haven't you sometimes seen, after a cold night, a lot of needles shooting out from the sides from a puddle?" "Yes, sir, often."