"You can see some now, then," replied Vosh as he eagerly pointed forward. "See 'em, Susie? See 'em? Way down yonder on the ice."
"I see them!" shouted Pen. "One, two, three, four of 'em."
"Those black specks?" said Susie.
There they were indeed, and they were beginning to move rapidly across the ice; but they were too far away for any thing more than just to make out what they were.
Even Ponto continued to plod along soberly behind the sleigh. He was too old a dog to excite himself over any such distant and impossible game as that.
Deacon Farnham seemed to know exactly what he was about; for he drove right on where nobody else could see any road, until he stopped in front of a very small and very rudely made kind of house.
"Aunt Judith," asked Susie, "did anybody ever live here?"
"Live here, child? Why, that there's a choppers' shanty. It's for anybody that wants it, now they've done with it."
That was so, but it was not for the mere human beings of that picnic-party. The deacon took his horses from the sleigh, and led them in through the rickety door.
"They're a little warm," he said, "but they won't catch cold in there. I'll give 'em a good feed, Vosh, while you're starting a fire.—Get the guns and tackle out, Corry."