as coming to you, Mr. Gordon, to show you how fast the snow was
gathering. I--I scraped that ball of it off the step. The porter opened
the door for me just a moment. I say, Mr. Gordon, it's a fierce storm!"

Tommy came through this explanation pretty well. Uncle Dick's
understanding smile helped him a good bit.

"Quite so," said Mr. Gordon, and looking at Major Pater again. "Of course,
I would never have known it was snowing if you had not undertaken to show
me. But you see, Major Pater, your foot was sticking out into the aisle. I
saw it. You have the misfortune to----"

"Artificial leg, sir," growled Major Pater.

"Quite so. Well, accidents will happen, you know. There! You are quite dry
again. I don't think you will get much sleep here until the porter makes
up the berths. Suppose we go into the smoking compartment and soothe our
minds, Major?"

"Ah--Humph! Thank you, Mr.--er----?"

"Mr. Gordon," explained Tommy Tucker still standing as though he had
swallowed a very stiff poker indeed.

"Ah! Glad to meet you, Mr. Gordon." They shook hands. Then Major Pater
shot another command at Tommy: "H-r-r-rrp!" (or so it sounded) and the boy
with vast relief dropped his stiff military pose.

The rest of the "live wire octette"--even Timothy and Libbie--were highly
delighted by the outcome of Tommy's joke. For, if there is fun in such a
practical joke as Tommy had tried to carry through, they thought there was
double fun in seeing the biter bitten!

"Now will you be good?" crowed his brother, Ted. "See what you get for
being so fresh! Tumbling over his game leg and pitching a wilted snowball
at the Major's head. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

"Oh, hush!" grumbled Tommy. "You needn't say anything. He doesn't know
which of the Tucker twins it was crowned him with that snowball, and you
are just as much in his bad books as I am. Remember that."

"Listen to him!" cried Ted, at once feeling abused. "And Major Pater is
near-sighted, too, although he scorns to wear glasses. You've got me into
a mess, too, Tommy Tucker."

"There! There!" said Betty Gordon, soothingly. "Never mind. Uncle Dick
will smooth him down. But I do think, boys, that you need not have got
into trouble at all."

"Huh! that's our natural state," observed Teddy. "Boys out of trouble are
like fish out of water. So my dad says. And he ought to know," he grinned.
"He has twins."

Tommy considered, however, that he had got out of a bad box pretty easi