“You’re scared,” he said. “That’s your main trouble. You’re afraid you’ll fall.”
“So would you be if you were black-and-blue all over,” replied Joe spiritedly. “I don’t mind falling now and then; anyway, I ain’t afraid; but I don’t like to fall all the time!”
Hal laughed. “Why don’t you try tying a pillow behind you, Joe?”
Joe echoed the laugh, though faintly. “I guess it would have to be a――what do you call it?――bolster!”
“We aren’t going to get any fish to-day,” said Bert, “and I’m getting frozen. Let’s pull up the lines and go in.” Hal agreed, and, when the lines were up, he and Bert started toward camp. “Aren’t you coming, Joe?” Hal called.
“Not just yet,” Joe replied. “I guess I’ll stay out and――and fall down awhile!”
The others went on, laughing, leaving Joe the sole occupant of the broad frozen surface. It had stopped snowing now, and there was a hint of color in the west that promised clearing. Joe started warily down the lake, keeping near the shore where the wind had freakishly swept the powdery snow from the ice and arranged it in long windrows whose shadowed hollows were purpling with the twilight. It was, he reflected, all well enough for Hal to tell him to have confidence, but――here Joe’s arms described a windmill sweep in the air and he narrowly escaped a tumble――how could you have confidence when you just went off your feet every time you tried to skate faster than a walk? There was, though, a good deal of persistent courage in his make-up, and he kept on, rather more confident perhaps because he was safe from observation. He rounded the turn and could see, far ahead, the little bridge that spanned the outlet. As he floundered on, awkwardly but with grim determination, he passed the empty, shuttered cabins. They looked lonesome and eerie in the gathering shadows, and he recalled with a little nervous thrill the visit of the Sheriff and his mission.
Back in the camp, Hal aroused the smouldering fire in the chimney place and he and Bert, having removed their damp mackinaws and damper boots, drew chairs to the fire and sank luxuriously into them. “Funny about Joe,” observed Bert, after a silence. “You’d think a fellow as old as he is――sixteen, isn’t he?――would have learned to skate better.”