Very few of them could even hobble on skates, and those few carried the art no farther than by cutting up the slides.

But thaw came on, so that there was no sliding, and then the young roughs amused themselves with stamping holes in the soft ice with their hobnailed heels.

When word came to us that they were taking the stones off our wall and pitching them down on to the soft ice below, to act as skaters' stumbling-blocks for the rest of that hard winter which we expected, Jem's indignation was not greater than mine.

My father was not at home, and indeed, when we had complained before, he rather snubbed us, and said that we could not want the whole of the pond to ourselves, and that he had always lived quietly with his neighbours and we must learn to do the same, and so forth.

No action at all calculated to assuage our thirst for revenge was likely to be taken by him, so Jem and I held a council by Charlie's sofa, and it was a council of war.