



Produced by Annie R. McGuire








[Illustration: HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE
AN ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY.]

       *       *       *       *       *

VOL. II.--NO. 62. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. PRICE FOUR
CENTS.

Tuesday, January 4, 1881. Copyright, 1880, by HARPER & BROTHERS. $1.50
per Year, in Advance.

       *       *       *       *       *




[Illustration: FISHING THROUGH THE ICE.--DRAWN BY W. R. YEAGER, FROM A
SKETCH BY F. H. TAYLOR.]

MR. CHALKER'S RUSE.

BY FRANK H. TAYLOR.


Every country boy in New England knows that the village school-house is
generally located upon the top of the bleakest hill in the neighborhood,
and is the sport of every eddying gust of wind that drives down from the
great pine wilderness of Maine, heaping the great drifts across the road
and about the door for the children to break through, and then shake
themselves free of the clinging snow like so many young Newfoundlands.

And where, by any chance, was there ever a school-house containing a
stove that didn't roast the scholars seated near it, and leave the
others to freeze?

All wide-awake boys who know the pleasures of skating will agree with me
that however cold and stormy it is upon the hill-tops, the mill-pond
(and what does a village amount to without a mill-pond, indeed?) is
always down in the coziest nook between