Once or twice in autumn, on their way south, great flights of kramsfowl, a bird highly esteemed by the cook, roosted in the Plantage, a little grove just outside of town. Just when that would be, no one could tell, but for weeks after the leaves began to turn some of us set our snares,--a willow bough bent in a triangle, with horse-hair loops in each of the uprights, and baited with rowan-berries below. The bird would sit and swing in the triangle, and, bending to get at the berries under its feet, would put its head through one or both of the loops and be strangled. Morning after morning we would sneak out before breakfast to look to our snares and come home empty-handed. Then some brisk morning, when the first touch of frost was in the air, we would drag such loads of the big black birds into town that there would be talk of it for days. Every sick person we knew had a feast, and we felt that we were mighty hunters indeed. [Illustration: CRUISING UP TO THE SEEM CHURCH.] So there was no lack of sport in the Old Town, and I haven’t begun to tell you of it all. In the winter there was the river that was then dammed back and became a great frozen lake five or six miles long. Then we would strap on our skates good and tight for a long trip, and go cruising up from the Kannegrove,[14] the big ditch down by the Cloister, to the Seem church, clear at the further end, and, spreading our jackets out, let the wind use them as sails on the run back. I tell you we came down in a hurry. No time for fancy skating then. But a mighty sharp lookout had to be kept on that trip, for if a skate slid into a crack there was a wrench and a fall, and it was apt to be a bad one. When the snow lay deep, there was such coasting as you do not often find. For though the country was flat as a pancake, the Castle Hill was there with its deep moat. Almost clear up on the other side the rush would fetch you. I haven’t seen a better coasting hill in New England. But, on the other hand, I must own that American boys are “up” on steering to an extent we didn’t dream of. The “leg out” is a Yankee invention, and it is great. We just slid. CHAPTER VII [Illustration: RIBERHUS.]