However, Nancy left Number 30 without disturbing her roommate on this morning and, well wrapped up against the biting cold, slipped downstairs and out of one of the rear doors. The front door of Pinewood Hall had not been unchained at that hour.
She was the first girl out and it was an hour yet to breakfast time. She ran straight through the pine woods at the back, passing the gymnasium and frozen courts, and so down to the river.
A pale moon still hung low on the horizon. The river seemed as black as ink and not a ripple appeared upon its surface.
“Oh, dear! it’s not frozen at all,” was Nancy’s, first thought.
And then she saw the sheen of the moonlight across the black surface.
“That never is water in the world!” she gasped, and half running, half sliding, descended the steep bank to the verge of the river.
The wide expanse of the stream proved to be sheathed entirely in black, new ice.
Nancy uttered a cry of delight and touched it with one strongly-shod foot, and then the other. It rang under her heel—there was not a single crack of protest. It bore her weight as firmly as a rock.
Breathlessly Nancy tried it farther out. The keen frost of a single night had chained the river firmly. She slid a little way. Then she ran for momentum, and slid smoothly, well balanced from her hips, with her feet wide spread. Her red lips opened with a sigh of delight. Her eyes sparkled and the hair was tossed back from under her woolen cap.
“Great! Great!” she cried aloud, when she came to a stop.