Kate set off at a rapid trot down the road, which led to the pond.  The sleigh went very easily, for the road was smooth.  There had been rain and thaws lately, and cold weather after them, so that the surface of the road had melted, and then become frozen again; and this made it icy.  They found the ice of the pond in the same state.  The rain and the thaws had melted the snow, upon the top of the ice, and made it a sheet of water.  Then this had frozen again, so that now the surface of the pond was almost every where hard and smooth; and when they came down upon it, and turned to go across the bay, the horse being at his full speed, the sleigh swept round sideways over the ice, in a great circle, and made the farmer’s wife very much afraid that she should be upset.  It seemed as if the sleigh was trying to get before the horse.

However, Amos, who was driving, contrived to get the horse ahead again, and then they went on with great speed.  It was a mile across to the end of the point of land; but Kate carried them over this space in a very few minutes.  As they drew near to the point, they watched the light.  It did not rise at all.

“It cannot be the moon,” said Jonas, “for it is now full a quarter of an hour since we first saw it.”

“Yes,” said the farmer’s wife, “I knew it couldn’t be the moon.”

Just at this moment, the sleigh came around the point with great speed, and brought into view a very bright but distant fire, far before them.

“It is a fire!” they all exclaimed.

“But it isn’t in the direction of the village,” said Jonas.

“It must be some farm-house,” said the farmer’s wife, “on the shore.”

“No,” said Jonas, “I think it is on the ice.”

It very soon became evident that the fire was upon the ice.  It was plainly a large fire, though the distance made it look rather small.  It was very bright, and it flashed up high; and a cloud of illuminated smoke arose from it, and floated off to the northward.  The party in the sleigh could soon perceive, also, a number of small, bright spots near it, which seemed to be in motion about the fire.  They looked like the moons about the planet Jupiter, seen through a telescope.

“I wonder what it is,” said Isabella.

“I presume,” said Jonas, “that the boys are out skating, and this is a fire on the ice, which they have built.”

“And are those the boys moving about?” asked Oliver.

“Yes,” said Jonas.  “When they are near the fire, the light shines upon their faces.”

As they rode on, it became gradually more and more evident that Jonas was right.  The forms of the skaters, as they stood before the fire, or came wheeling up to it, became more and more distinct, and, in fact, the ringing sound of the skates soon became audible.  The horse, in the mean time, went on, with great speed, directly towards the fire.  When they arrived near the fire, the skaters came around them in great numbers, wondering who could have come.  Jonas asked them where they got the wood to build their fire.