to be
kinder to her since that night of the corn husking.

"What's a little snow?" he demanded, laughing. "Bundle up good, Sister,
and I'll go over with you. I want to see Henry, anyway."

"Crazy young'uns," observed Mother Atterson. But she made no real
objection. Whatever Hiram said was right, in the old lady's eyes.

They tramped through the snowy fields with a lantern, and found it
half-knee deep in some drifts before they arrived at the Pollocks, short
as had been the duration of the fall.

But they were welcomed vociferously at the neighbor's; preparations were
made for a long evening's fun; for with the snow coming down so steadily
there would be little work done out of doors the following day, so the
family need not seek their beds early.

The Pollock children had made a good store of nuts, like the squirrels;
and there was plenty of corn to pop, and molasses for candy, or
corn-balls, and red apples to roast, and sweet cider from the casks in
the cellar.

The older girls retired to a corner of the wide hearth with their
work-boxes, and Hiram and Henry worked out several problems regarding
the latter's eleven-week course at the agricultural college, which would
begin the following week; while the young ones played games until they
fell fast asleep in odd corners of the big kitchen.

It was nearly midnight, indeed, when Hiram and Sister started home. And
it was still snowing, and snowing heavily.

"We'll have to get all the plows out to-morrow morning!" Henry shouted
after them from the porch.

And it was no easy matter to wade home through the heavy drifts.

"I never could have done it without you, Hi," declared the girl, when
she finally floundered onto the Atterson porch, panting and laughing.

"I'll take a look around the barns before I come in," remarked the
careful young farmer.

This was a duty he never neglected, no matter how late he went to bed,
nor how tired he was. Half way to the barn he halted. A light was waving
wildly by the Dickerson back door.

It was a lantern, and Hiram knew that it was being whirled around and
around somebody's head. He thought he heard, too, a shouting through the
falling snow.

"Something's wrong over yonder," thought the young farmer.

He hesitated but for a moment. He had never stepped upon the Dickerson
place, nor spoken to Sam Dickerson since the trouble about the turkeys.
The lantern continued to swing. Eagerly as the snow came down, it could
not bli