In January the snow lay longer, and left big bones on the moors, and Jem and I made a slide to school on the pack track, and towards the end of the month the mill-dam froze hard, and we had slides fifteen yards long, and skating; and Winter seemed to have come back in good earnest to fetch his bones away.
Jem was great fun in frosty weather; Charlie and I used to die of laughing at him.

I think cold made him pugnacious; he seemed always ready for a row, and was constantly in one.

The January frost came in our Christmas holidays, so Jem had lots of time on his hands; he spent almost all of it out of doors, and he devoted a good deal of it to fighting with the rough lads of the village.

There was a standing subject of quarrel, which is a great thing for either tribes or individuals who have a turn that way.

A pond at the corner of the lower paddock was fed by a stream which also fed the mill-dam; and the mill-dam was close by, though, as it happened, not on my father's property.