"Whip you?"

"'Spect so; don't mind it if she does." Ezra brought a great show of courage to balance the other's immunity from danger. "Don't mind nothin' 'bout a little whippin'," he added, with a brave and contemptuous air. He whistled as he went on.

Ephraim stood watching him. He had enough brave blood in his veins to feel that this contempt of a whipping was a greater thing than not being whipped. He felt an envious admiration of Ezra Ray, but that did not prevent his calling after him:

"Ezra!"

"What say?"

"You ain't goin' to tell my mother?"

"Didn't I say I wasn't? I don't tell fibs. Hope to die if I do."

Ezra's brave whistle, as cheerfully defiant of his mother's prospective wrath as the note of a bugler advancing to the charge, died away in the distance. For Ephraim now began the one unrestrained hilarity of his whole life. All by himself in the white moonlight and the keen night air he climbed the long hill, and slid down over and over. He ignored his feeble and laboring breath of life. He trod upon, he outspeeded all infirmities of the flesh in his wild triumph of the spirit. He shouted and hallooed as he shot down the hill. His mother could not have recognized his voice had she heard it, for it was the first time that the boy had ever given full cry to the natural voice of youth and his heart. A few stolen races, and sorties up apple-trees, a few stolen slides had poor Ephraim Thayer had; they had been snatched in odd minutes, at the imminent danger of discovery; but now he had the wide night before him; he had broken over all his trammels, and he was free.

Up and down the hill went Ephraim Thayer, having the one playtime of his life, speeding on his brother's famous sled against bondage and deprivation and death. It was after midnight when he went home; all the village lights were out; the white road stretched before him, as still and deserted as a road through solitude itself. Ephraim had never been out-of-doors so late before, he had never been so alone in his life, but he was not afraid. He was not afraid of anything in the lonely night, and he was not afraid of his mother at home. He thought to himself exultantly that Ezra Ray had been no more courageous than he, although, to be sure, he had not a whipping to fear like Ezra.

His heart was full of joyful triumph that he was not wholly guilty, since it was the outcome of an innocent desire.

As he walked along he tipped up his face and stared with his stupid boyish eyes at the stars paling in the full moonlight, and the great moon herself overriding the clouds and the stars. It made him think of the catechism and the Commandments, and then a little pang of terror shot through him, but even that did not daunt him. He did not look up at the stars again, but bent his head and trudged on, with the sled-rope pulling at his weak chest.

When he reached his own yard he stepped as carefully as he could; still he was not afraid. He put the sled back in the shed; then he stole into the house. He took off his shoes in the entry, and got safely into his own room. He was in his night-gown and all ready for bed when another daring thought struck him.

Ephraim padded softly on his bare feet out through the kitchen to the pantry. Every third step or so he stopped and listened to the heavy double breathing from the bedroom beyond. So long as that continued he was safe. He listened, and then slid on a pace or two as noiseless as a shadow in the moonlight.

Ephraim knew well where the mince-pies were kept. There was a long row of them covered with towels on an upper shelf.

Ephraim hoisted himself painfully upon a meal-bucket, and clawed a pie over the edge of the shelf. He could scarcely reach, and there was quite a loud grating noise. He stood trembling on the bucket and listened, but the double breathing continued. Deborah had been unusually tired that night; she had gone to bed earlier, and slept more soundly.

Ephraim broke a great jagged half from the mince-pie; then replaced it with another grating slide. Again he listened, but his mother had not been awakened.

Ephraim crept back to his bedroom. There he sat on the edge of his bed and devoured his pie. The rich spicy compound and the fat plums melted on his tongue, and the savor thereof delighted his very soul.

Then Ephraim got into bed and pulled the quilts over him. For the first and only occasion in his life he had had a good time.

The next morning Ephraim felt very ill, but he kept it from his mother. He took his medicine of his own accord several times, and turned his head from her, that she might not notice his laboring breath.

In the middle of the forenoon Deborah went out. She had to drive over to Bolton to get some sugar and tea. She would not buy anything now at Berry's store. Caleb had gone down to the lot to cut a little wood; he had harnessed the horse for her before he went. It was a cold day, and she wrapped herself up well in two shawls and a thick veil over her hood. When she was all ready she gave Ephraim his parting instructions, rearing over him with stern gestures, like a veiled justice.

"Now," said she, "you listen to what I tell you. When your father comes in you tell him I want him to set right down and finish parin'

them apples. They are spoilin', an' I'm goin' to make 'em into sauce.

You tell him to set right down and go to work on 'em; he can get 'em done by the time I get home, an' I can make the sauce this afternoon.

You set here an' take your medicine an' learn your catechism. You can study over the Commandments, too; you ain't got 'em any too well. Do you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Ephraim. He looked away from his mother as he spoke, and his panting breath clouded the clear space on the frosty window-pane. He sat beside the window in the rocking-chair.

"Mind you tell your father about them apples," repeated his mother as she went out.

"Yes, ma'am," said Ephraim. He watched his mother drive out of the yard, guiding the horse carefully through the frozen ridges of the drive. Presently he took another spoonful of his medicine. He felt a little easier, but still very ill. His father came a few minutes after his mother had gone. He heard him stamping in through the back door; then his frost-reddened old face looked in on Ephraim.

"Mother gone?" said he.

"She's jest gone," replied Ephraim. His father came in. He looked at the boy with a childish and anxious sweetness. "Don't you feel quite as well as you did?" he inquired.

"Dunno as I do."

"Took your medicine reg'lar?"

Ephraim nodded.

"I guess it's good medicine," said Caleb; "it come real high; I guess the doctor thought consid'ble of it. I'd take it reg'lar if I was you. I thought you looked as if you didn't feel quite so well as common when I come in."

Caleb took off his boots and tended the fire. Ephraim began to feel a little better; his heart did not beat quite so laboriously.

He did not say a word to his father about paring the apples. Caleb went into the pantry and came back eating a slice of mince-pie.

"I found there was a pie cut, and I thought mother wouldn't mind if I took a leetle piece," he remarked, apologetically. He would never have dared take the pie without permission had his wife been at home.

"She ain't goin' to be home till arter dinner-time, an' I began to feel kinder gone," added Caleb. He stood by the fire, and munched the pie with a relish slightly lessened by remorse. "Don't you want nothin'" he asked of Ephraim. "Mebbe a little piece of pie wouldn't hurt you none."

Caleb's ideas of hygienic food were primitive. He believed, as innocently as if he had lived in Eden before the Prohibition, that all food which he liked was good for him, and he applied his theory to all mankind. He had deferred to Deborah's imperious will, but he had never been able to understand why she would not allow Ephraim to eat mince-pie or anything else which his soul loved and craved.

"No, guess I don't," Ephraim replied. He gazed moodily out of the window. "Father," said he, suddenly.

"What say, sonny?"

"I eat some of that pie last night."

"Mother give it to you?"

"No; I clim up on the meal-bucket, an' got it in the night."

"You might have fell, an' then I dunno what mother'd ha' said to you," said Caleb.

"An' I did somethin' else."

"What else did you do?"

"I went out a-coastin' after you an' her was asleep."

"You didn't, now?"

"Yes, I did."

"An' we didn't neither on us wake up?"

"You was a-snorin' the whole time."

"I don't s'pose you'd oughter have done it, Ephraim," said Caleb, and he tried to make his tone severe.

"I never went a-coastin' in my whole life before," said Ephraim; "it ain't fair."