and stoop down and pick up a rock, and
spit on it and turn it over and lay it down again very carefully
upside down, and your side will quit hurting."

Right then, I stumbled over a log and fell down on my face, and
scrambled to my feet and we hurried on, and I said to Poetry, "What do
you do when you get a sore toe from stumping it on a log--stoop over
and scrape the snow off the log and kiss it, and turn it over, and
then--?"

It wasn't any time to be funny, only worried, but Poetry explained to
me that it was the _stooping_ that was what did it. "It's getting your
body bent double, that does it.--Hey! Look! There he is now!"

I looked in the direction of our house, since we were getting pretty
close to Bumblebee hill, and sure enough, there was our teacher
sitting on his great big beautiful brown horse which was standing and
prancing right beside the old iron pitcher pump not more than twenty
feet from our back door. Mom was standing there with her sweater on
and a scarf on her head talking to him or maybe listening to him, then
I saw Mr. Black tip his hat like an honest-to-goodness gentleman, and
bow, and his pretty horse whirled about and went in a horse hurry to
our front gate which was open, and being held open by my pop, and he
went on, galloping up the road, his horse galloping in the shadow
which they made on the snowy road ahead of them.

Well, that was that, I thought, and Poetry and I who were at the top
of Bumblebee hill hurried down to where he and I had left our sleds,
the rest of the gang having taken theirs with them when we'd gone to
the cave. At the bottom of the hill, we saw the great big tall snow
man. The sun was still shining right straight on it, but wouldn't be,
pretty soon, but would go down. So Poetry and I stopped close to it,
and he got his camera ready.

"You get _The Hoosier Schoolmaster_, Bill, and turn it around and
stand it up against the Hoosier schoolmaster's stomach." Poetry
ordered, "so I can get a good picture of it," which I started to do,
and then gasped.... _There wasn't any Hoosier Schoolmaster!_ The book
was gone. "It's gone!" I said to Poetry, and it was, and there was a
page of yellow writing paper, instead.

"Hey!" I said, "There's something printed on it!" Sure enough, there
was. The piece of yellow writing tablet was standing up on the two
sticks, leaning against the snow man's stomach, and was fastened so
the wind wouldn't blow it away, by another stick stuck th