mountaineers hurrah shrilly for "Chris'mus!"

As he began to re-load his gun, the small boys clustered around him,
their hands in the pockets of their baggy jeans trousers, their heads
inquiringly askew.

"They air a-goin' ter hev a pea-fow_el_ fur dinner down yander ter
Birk's Mill," Rick remarked.

The smallest boy smacked his lips,--not that he knew how pea-fowl
tastes, but he imagined unutterable things.

"Somehows I hates fur ye ter go ter eat at Birk's Mill, they air sech a
set o' drinkin' men down thar ter Malviny's house," said Rick's mother,
as she stood in the doorway, and looked anxiously at him.

For his elder sister was Birk's wife, and to this great feast he was
invited as a representative of the family, his father being disabled by
"rheumatics," and his mother kept at home by the necessity of providing
dinner for those four small boys.

"Hain't I done promised ye not ter tech a drap o' liquor this Chris'mus
day?" asked Rick.

"That's a fac'," his mother admitted. "But boys, an' men-folks
ginerally, air scandalous easy ter break a promise whar whiskey is in
it."

"I'll hev ye ter know that when I gin my word, I keeps it!" cried Rick
pridefully.

He little dreamed how that promise was to be assailed before the sun
should go down.

He was a tall, sinewy boy, deft of foot as all these mountaineers are,
and a seven-mile walk in the snow to Birk's Mill he considered a mere
trifle. He tramped along cheerily enough through the silent solitudes of
the dense forest. Only at long intervals the stillness was broken by the
cracking of a bough under the weight of snow, or the whistling of a gust
of wind through the narrow valley far below.

All at once--it was a terrible shock of surprise--he was sinking! Was
there nothing beneath his feet but the vague depths of air to the base
of the mountain? He realized with a quiver of dismay that he had
mistaken a huge drift-filled fissure, between a jutting crag and the
wall of the ridge, for the solid, snow-covered ground. He tossed his
arms about wildly in his effort to grasp something firm. The motion only
dislodged the drift. He felt that it was falling, and he was going
down--down--down with it. He saw the trees on the summit of Old Windy
disappear. He caught one glimpse of the neighboring ridges. Then he was
blinded and enveloped in this cruel whiteness. He had a wild idea that
he had been delivered to it forever; even in the first thaw it would
curl up into