is my other mitten? Oh! thank
you, Hilda! Did we make a pretty picture, flying through the air?"

"Lovely!" said Hilda. "If I had only had my camera! But I was really
frightened. I am hardly sure now that you are not killed, you did go so
very hard!"

"The toboggan _is_ killed!" said Gerald, ruefully. "Kindling-wood, poor
old thing! Just look at it!" He dragged to light some forlorn remnants,
which certainly did not look as if they could be of service again save
in some humble capacity.

"Too bad!" said his father. "Fortune of war, my boy! But there is plenty
of room for you and Ferrers on the two others. We must see about this
stone, and get it out of the way."

Search revealed a big, jagged stone, so fitted into the slope of the
hill that the snow had lain smoothly over it; but it had caught the
toboggan in mid-flight. It was soon torn from its bed, rolled down the
hill, and deposited on the other side of the wall. Then they all climbed
the hill again, trying as they went to sing the Tobogganing Song;
failing for lack of breath, panting, singing again, and all the while
struggling upward, laughing and chattering and pelting each other with
the soft snow.

"When the field lies clear in the moon, boy,
And the wood hangs dark on the hill,
When the long white way shows never a sleigh,
And the sound of the bells is still,

"Then hurry, hurry, hurry!
And bring the toboggans along!
A last 'Never fear!' to Mother-my-dear,
Then off with a shout and a song.

"A-tilt on the billowy slope, boy,
Like a boat that bends to the sea,
With the heart a-tilt in your breast, boy,
And your chin well down on your knee,

"Then over, over, over,
As the boat skims over the main,
A plunge and a swoop, a gasp and a whoop,
And away o'er the glittering plain!

"The boat, and the bird, and the breeze, boy,
Which the poet is apt to sing,
Are old and slow and clumsy, I know,
By us that have never a wing.

"Still onward, onward, onward,
Till the brook joins the meadow below,
And then with a shout, see us tumbling out,
To plunge in the feathery snow.

"Back now by the side of the hedge, boy,
Where the roses in summer grow,