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The hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to
be done metaphorically, since it was done in the
sight of all Dunderbunk.

He had divined a happy result, when he missed
Bill Tarbox from the arena, and saw him a furlong
away, hand in hand with his reconciled sweetheart.

“I envy you, Bill,” said he, “almost too much
to put proper fervor into my congratulations.”

“Your time will come,” the foreman rejoined.

And says Belle, “I am sure there is a lady skating
somewhere, and only waiting for you to follow
her.”

“I don't see her,” Wade replied, looking with a
mock-grave face up and down and athwart the
river. “When you 've all gone to dinner, I 'll
prospect ten miles up and down, and try to find a
good matrimonial claim that 's not taken.”

“You will not come up to dinner?” Belle asked.

“I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holiday,”
said Wade. “I 've sent Perry up for a
luncheon. Here he comes with it. So I cede
my quarter of your pie, Miss Belle, to a better
fellow.”

“Oh!” cries Perry, coming up and bowing elaborately.
“Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, I believe. Ah,
yes! Well, I will mention it up at Albany. I am

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going to take my Guards up to call on the Governor.”

Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunderbunk
boys, organized by him as the Purtett Guards,
and taught to salute him as Generalissimo with military
honors.

So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn,
now began to have an effect upon the atmosphere.
Few odors are more subtile and pervading than
this, and few more appetizing. Indeed, there is
said to be an odd fellow, a strictly American gourmand,
in New York, who sits from noon to dusk
on Christmas-Day up in a tall steeple, merely
to catch the aroma of roast-turkey floating over
the city, — and much good, it is said, it does
him.

Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet
hunger as this gentleman's expedient. When the
spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of Ceylon's
isle over the river and every whiff talked
Turkey, the population of Dunderbunk listened to
the wooing and began to follow its several noses —
snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants,
fines, bulgies, and bifids — on the way to the several
households which those noses adorned or defaced.
Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes,
a Dinner, that day, and Richard Wade was gratefully
remembered by many over-fed foundry-men
and their over-fed families.

Wade had not had half skating enough.

“I 'll time myself down to Skerrett's Point,” he

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thought, “and take my luncheon there among the
hemlocks.”

The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett,
Wade's friend and college comrade of ten years
gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and
smokes from his chimneys this morning had confirmed
to Wade's eyes the rumor of his return.

Skerrett's Point was a mile below the Foundry.
Our hero did his mile under three minutes. How
many seconds under, I will not say. I do not wish
to make other fellows unhappy.

The Point was a favorite spot of Wade's. Many
a twilight of last summer, tired with his fagging
at the Works to make good the evil of Whiffler's
rule, he had lain there on the rocks under the hemlocks,
breathing the spicy methyl they poured into
the air. After his day's hard fight, in the dust and
heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he
used to take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until
the murmur and fragrance of the woods, the cool
wind, and the soothing loiter of the shining stream
had purged him from the fevers of his task.

To this old haunt he skated, and kindling a little
fire, as an old campaigner loves to do, he sat down
and lunched heartily on Mrs. Purtett's cold leg, —
cannibal thought! — on the cold leg of Mrs. Purtett's
yesterday's turkey. Then lighting his weed,—
dear ally of the lonely, — the Superintendent
began to think of his foreman's bliss, and to long
for something similar on his own plane.

“I hope the wish is father to its fulfillment,” he

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said. “But I must not stop here and be spooney.
Such a halcyon day I may not have again in all my
life, and I ought to make the best of it, with my
New Skates.”

So he dashed off, and filled the little cove above
the Point with a labyrinth of curves and flourishes.

When that bit of crystal tablet was well covered,
the podographer sighed for a new sheet to
inscribe his intricate rubricas upon. Why not
write more stanzas of the poetry of motion on the
ice below the Point? Why not?

Braced by his lunch on the brown fibre of good
Mrs. Purtett's cold drumstick and thigh, Wade
was now in fine trim. The air was more glittering
and electric than ever. It was triumph and victory
and pæan in action to go flashing along over
this footing, smoother than polished marble and
sheenier than first-water gems.

Wade felt the high exhilaration of pure blood
galloping through a body alive from top to toe.
The rhythm of his movement was like music
to him.

The Point ended in a sharp promontory. Just
before he came abreast of it, Wade under mighty
headway flung into his favorite corkscrew spiral on
one foot, and went whirling dizzily along, round
and round, in a straight line.

At the dizziest moment, he was suddenly aware
of a figure, also turning the Point at full speed, and
rushing to a collision.

He jerked aside to avoid it. He could not look

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to his footing. His skate struck a broken oar, imbedded
in the ice. He fell violently, and lay like a
dead man.

His New Skates, Testimonial of Merit, seem to
have served him a shabby trick.