“If I went I’d like to take my camera,” said Harry. “I was reading an article in the paper the other day about how to hunt game with a snap-shot machine. That would just suit me. Think of what a famous collection of pictures I might get—wild turkeys, deer and maybe a bear——” “If you met a bear I don’t think you’d stand to take his photograph. I’ll wager you’d leg it for all you were worth—or else shoot at him. But come on. If skating is so good there is no use of our wasting time here talking,” concluded Joe, as he moved off. CHAPTER IV SKATING Lakeport was a thriving town with a large number of inhabitants. Early as it was many people were out, and nearly every passer-by was greeted with a liberal dose of snowballs, for the lads of this down-East town were as fun-loving as are boys anywhere, and to leave a “good mark” slip past unnoticed was considered nothing short of a crime. When Joe and Harry reached the lake front they found a crowd of fully fifty men and boys, with a fair sprinkling of girls, engaged in skating and in ice-boating. The majority of the people were in the vicinity of the steamboat dock, for this was at the end of the main street, and a great “hanging-out” spot during the summer. But others were skating up the lake shore, and a few were following Dan Marcy’s new ice yacht, _Silver Queen_, as she tacked along on her way to the west shore, where an arm of the lake encircled the lower end of Pine Island. “Marcy’s going to try to beat the lake record,” Joe heard one boy call to another. “He says his new boat has got to knock the spots out of anything that ever sailed on the lake, or he’ll chop her up for firewood.” “Well, she’ll have to hum along if she beats the time made by the old _Whizzer_ last winter,” came from the other boy. “She sailed from the big pine to Hallett’s Point in exactly four minutes and ten seconds. My, but didn’t she scoot along!” It took but a few minutes for Joe and Harry to don their skates. As they left the shore they ran into Fred Rush, who was swinging along as if his very life depended upon it. “Hello, so you fellows have come down at last!” sang out Fred, who was short and stout, and as full of fun as a lad can be. “Thought you had made up your mind to go to bed again, or stay home and look for more Christmas presents. Been having dead loads of fun—had a race and come in second best, got knocked down twice, slipped on the ice over yonder, and got a wet foot in a hole some fellow cut, and Jerry Little hit me in the shin with his hockey stick. Say, but you fellows are positively missing the time of your lives.” “I want to miss it, if I’m going to have all those things happen to me,” returned Joe, dryly. Then he added: “Harry tells me you got a double-barreled shotgun almost like mine. How do you like it?”