next, and
behave generally like a pair of unbroken colts.

Quiz had once learned to walk on snow-shoes. He grew to be quite
an adept, indeed, and could take a two-foot hurdle with little
difficulty. But he soon found that so far from being a help, his
familiarity with the snow-shoe was a great hindrance.

The mode of walking on a Canadian snow-shoe, which he had learned with
such difficulty, had to be completely unlearned before he could begin
to make progress with the Scandinavian footgear. For in snow-shoe
walking the feet must be lifted straight up and then carried forward
before they are planted, and any attempt to slide them forward makes a
woeful tangle; to try to lift the ski off the ground, however, is to
invite ridiculous distress, and the whole art of scooting on the ski
is in the long, sliding motion. It is a sort of skating on incredibly
long skates that must not be lifted from the snow.

Quiz had the skies made by a Kingston carpenter; and he was so proud
of them that, when a crowd gathered to see what he was going to do
with the mysterious slats, he proceeded to make his first attempt in
an open space in the Academy campus. He put the skies down on the
snow, slipped his toes into the straps, and, sweeping a proud glance
around among the wondering Kingstonians, dashed forward in his old
snow-shoe fashion.

It took the Kingstonians some seconds to decide which was Quiz and
which was ski. For the skittish skies skewed and skedaddled and
skulked and skipped and scrubbed and screwed and screamed and scrawled
and scooped and scrabbled and scrambled and scambled and scumbled
and scraped and scrunched and scudded and scuttled and scuffled
and skimped and scattered in such scandalous scampishness that the
scornful scholars scoffed.

Quiz quit.

The poor boy was so laughed at for days by the whole Academy that his
spunk was finally aroused. He got out again the skies he had hidden
away in disgust, and practised upon them in the fields, at a distance
from the campus, until he had finally broken the broncos and made a
swift and delightful team of them. He soon grew strong enough to glide
for hours at a high rate of speed without weariness, and the ski
became a serious rival to the bicycle in his affections.

He learned to shoot the hills at a breathless rate, climbing up
swiftly to the top; then, with feet apart, but even, zipping like an
express-train down the steep incline and far along the level below.