d-shed with an axe," said Tibby
chattily. "Yessir! Chopped it right in half, and it bled!"

"Look at the pretty snow falling on the trees," said Jill faintly.

At breakfast next morning, Mrs. Mariner having sneezed, made a
suggestion.

"Tibby, darling, wouldn't it be nice if you and cousin Jill played a
game of pretending you were pioneers in the Far West?"

"What's a pioneer?" enquired Tibby, pausing in the middle of an act of
violence on a plate of oatmeal.

"The pioneers were the early settlers in this country, dear. You have
read about them in your history book. They endured a great many
hardships, for life was very rough for them, with no railroads or
anything. I think it would be a nice game to play this morning."

Tibby looked at Jill. There was doubt in his eye. Jill returned his
gaze sympathetically. One thought was in both their minds.

"There is a string to this!" said Tibby's eye.

Mrs. Mariner sneezed again.

"You would have lots of fun," she said.

"What'ud we do?" asked Tibby cautiously. He had been had this way
before. Only last summer, on his mother's suggestion that he should
pretend he was a shipwrecked sailor on a desert island, he had
perspired through a whole afternoon cutting the grass in front of the
house to make a shipwrecked sailor's simple bed.

"I know," said Jill. "We'll pretend we're pioneers stormbound in their
log cabin in the woods, and the wolves are howling outside, and they
daren't go out, so they make a lovely big fire and sit in front of it
and read."

"And eat candy," suggested Tibby, warming to the idea.

"And eat candy," agreed Jill.

Mrs. Mariner frowned.

"I was going to suggest," she said frostily, "that you shovelled the
snow away from the front steps!"

"Splendid!" said Jill. "Oh, but I forgot. I want to go to the village
first."

"There will be plenty of time to do it when you get back."

"All right. I'll do it when I get back."

It was a quarter of an hour's walk to the village. Jill stopped at the
post-office.

"Could you tell me," she asked, "when the next train is to New York?"

"There's one at ten-ten," said the woman behind the window. "You'll
have to hurry."

"I'll hurry!" said Jill.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DRY-SALTERS WING DEREK

I

Doctors, laying down the law in their usual confident way, tell us
that the vitality of the human body is at its lowest at two o'clock in
the morning: and that it is then, as a consequence, that th