of the
stable-ladders to mount it from the rear, and instead of toboggans we
have only Poppsy's home-made hand-sleigh and Dinkie's somewhat
dilapidated "flexible coaster." But when water had been carried out
to that smooth runway and the boards had been coated with ice, like
brazil-nuts _glace_, and the snow along the lower course had been well
packed down, it at least gave you a run for your money.

The tip-top point of the slide couldn't have been much more than
fourteen or fifteen feet above the prairie-floor, but it seemed
perilous enough when I tried it out--much to the perturbation of
Whinstane Sandy--by lying stomach-down on Dinkie's coaster and letting
myself shoot along that well-iced incline. It was a kingly sensation,
that of speed wedded to danger, and it took me back to Davos at a
breath. Then I tried it with Dinkie, and then with Poppsy, and then
with Poppsy and Dinkie together. We had some grand old tumbles, in the
loose snow, and some unmentionable bruises, before we became
sufficiently expert to tool our sleigh-runners along their proper
trail. But it was good fun. The excitement of the thing, in fact,
rather got into my blood. In half an hour the three of us were covered
with snow, were shouting like Comanches, and were having an altogether
wild time of it. There was climbing enough to keep us warm, for all
the sub-zero weather, and I was finally allowed to escape to the house
only on the promise that I risk my neck again on the morrow.

_Friday the Twenty-Fourth_

My Dinkie's secret is no longer a secret. It divulged itself to me
to-day with the suddenness of a thunder-clap. _Peter Ketley has been
back at Alabama Ranch for nearly three weeks._

I was out with the kiddies this afternoon, having another wild time on
the toboggan-slide, dressed in an old Mackinaw of Dinky-Dunk's buckled
in close around my waist and a pair of Whinnie's heaviest woolen socks
over my moccasins and a mangy old gray-squirrel cap on by head. The
children looked like cherubs who'd been rolled in a flour-barrel, with
their eyes shining and their cheeks glowing like Richmond roses, but I
must have looked like something that had been put out to frighten the
coyotes away. At any rate, there we were, all squealing like pigs and
all powdered from tip to toe with the dry snow and all looking like
Piutes on the war-path. And who should walk calmly about the corner of
the buildings but Peter himself!

My heart stopped beat