“I’m starving,” declared Leslie Bradin.  “Come on, let’s eat now.  My mother put two stuffed eggs in my box.”

Seven very hungry small boys may dispose of seven hearty lunches in almost seven minutes.  It did take Sunny Boy and his friends a little longer, but in much less than half an hour they were through eating and had tossed the boxes into the brook and seen them rushed swiftly down stream.

“What’s on the other side of that fence?” asked Oliver Dunlap, pointing to a wire fence that ran across the pasture, dipped into the brook, and continued on the other side.

“Mr. Parkney said nobody lives there,” Sunny Boy reminded Oliver.  “Let’s explore where nobody lives.  Come on, fellows!”

They ran toward the fence, intending to climb over it, but before they reached it, Sunny Boy saw something that made him cry out in surprise.

“Look, Oliver!” he shouted.  “Carleton, look!  See the fence in the water!”

The boys looked toward the brook.  Part of the fence that was in the water had broken and hung wobbling.  But what had attracted Sunny Boy’s attention was a pile of ice cakes that were jammed against the fence.  They were a yellowish-white, not at all like the ice cakes the iceman left in the refrigerator on summer mornings.

“It’ll break in a minute,” declared Nelson Baker.  “Let’s watch.”

The boys stood waiting a few moments, and with a dull roar, the ice was forced through the fence, carrying a part of it along, and the water, as though angry at being held back, raced madly by, tossing cakes of ice on either bank.  A large piece was tossed right on the toe of Sunny Boy’s boot.

“There must be more ice where that came from,” said Nelson.  “Maybe we can find the beginning of the brook.  Hurry up!  Let’s try to find it.”

They could not run, or even walk very fast, because at every step they sank into the soft ground.  But, after they had climbed the fence, they came to a little graveled walk that was drier.

“Bet you I can throw a stone farther than any of you,” said Carleton Marsh.

“Bet you can’t!” retorted Perry Phelps.

Then every one had to toss a stone into the brook.  The water went so fast it was hard to tell whose stone went farthest, for none landed across the brook.  Still, in a way this was satisfactory, for each boy was sure that his stone had won.

“Well, come on, if you’re going to explore,” said Nelson Baker.  “What are you staring at, Sunny Boy?”

“Ice,” said Sunny Boy, pointing up the stream.  “Isn’t that ice all over everything?”

The boys looked.  A little distance away the ground seemed to be covered with cakes of ice.

“Hurry up!” shouted Perry.  “It’s an ice field.  We can have heaps of fun playing.”

The others hurried after Perry, and when they came to the field where the ice was they found that the brook was almost a river at this point.  It had cut a wide, new gash in the bank and had overflowed, leaving mud and water and ice in great quantities and cutting the trunks of little trees that stood in the way.  The boys scrambled up on the ice and pretended that they were at the North Pole.