ON A GLASS ROOF 127 



walking, as a crust that will not bear makes the 

 worst. On such good footing, with all my outfit 

 pocketable but the ice-slick, and that almost as 

 good shoulder-ballast as a gun, I got on so speedily 

 that I was soon on the " Crik," a broad and level 

 roadway to the lake. At the last turn of this I 

 found a couple of men fishing for pickerel, and 

 stopped for a little chat with them and to see what 

 sport they were having. Our conversation was 

 mostly carried on at long range, fired back and 

 forth across the ice — for they had a line of holes 

 cut two rods or so apart for fifty rods along the 

 channel, and the jack set at the farthest hole was 

 as likely as any to point skyward and start them 

 racing to it. Then I, at the farthest upstream hole, 

 would watch them as they reached the jack, 

 snatched it up, and quickly overhauled the line, 

 pulling out sometimes a pickerel, sometimes a 

 naked hook which the pickerel had got the better 

 of and robbed of its minnow. They would shout 

 back the tidings of their luck if good, or roll it back 

 in a growl if bad, and then come leisurely toward 

 me till another jack arose to beckon them more 

 swiftly forward. 



As I stooped to examine the fashion of a jack, 

 the tip of it flew up and nearly bumped my nose, 

 resenting which I laid hold of it and caught a three- 

 pound pickerel, or rather the hook caught him, 

 and I only pulled him out onto the drier side of the 



