Excerpt
CHAPTER I GOOD TIMES COMING
Hugh looked at the big thermometer alongside the Juggins' front door as he came out, and the mercury was still falling steadily.
"It's certainly a whole lot sharper than it was early this morning,Thad. Feels to me as if the first cold wave of the winter had struckScranton."
"The ice on our flooded baseball field, and that out at Hobson's mill-pond ought to be in great shape after a hard freeze to-night, Hugh."
"We're in luck this time, chum Thad. Look at that sky, will you? Never a cloud in sight, and the sun going down yellow. Deacon Winslow, our reliable old weather prophet blacksmith, who always keeps a goose-bone hanging up in his smithy, to tell what sort of a winter we're going to get, says such a sign stands for cold and clear to-morrow after that kind of a sunset. Red means warmer, you know."
"I only hope it keeps on for forty-eight hours more, that's all I can say, Hugh. This being Thursday, it would fetch us to Saturday. I understand they're not meaning to let a single pair of steel runners on the baseball park, to mark the smooth surface of the new ice, until Saturday morning."
"Which will be a fine thing for our hockey try-out with the scratchSeven, eh, Thad?"
"We want to test our team play before going up against the boys of Keyport High, that's a fact; and Scranton can put up a hard fighting bunch of irregulars. There are some mighty clever hockey players in and out of the high school, who are not on our Seven. I guess there ought to be a pretty lively game on Saturday; and there will be if several fellows I could mention line up against us."
The two boys who had just left the home of a schoolmate named Horatio Juggins were great friends. Although Hugh Morgan had seemed to jump into popular leadership among the boys of Scranton, soon after his folks came to reside in the town, he and Thad Stevens had become almost inseparables.
Indeed, some of the fellows often regarded them as "Damon and Pythias," or on occasions it might be "David and Jonathan." Both were of an athletic turn, and took prominent parts in all baseball games, and other strenuous outdoor sports indulged in by the boys of Scranton High; a record of which will be found in the several preceding books of this series, to which the new reader is referred, if he feels any curiosity concerning the earlier doings of this lively bunch.
Hugh was cool and calm in times when his chum would show visible signs of great excitement. He had drilled himself to control his temper under provocation, until he felt master of himself.
It was the 10th of January, and thus far the opportunities for skating that had come to the young people of that section of country where Scranton was located, had been almost nil; which would account for the enthusiasm of the lads when Thad announced how rapidly the thermometer was giving promise of a severe cold spell.
Scranton had two keen rivals for athletic honors. Allandale and Belleville High fellows had given them a hard run of it before they carried off the championship pennant of the county in baseball the preceding summer....