ilt, even a sense of impending punishment for
disobedience, but they could not weigh with the delirium of this
snow-battle.

II

One of the raiding soldiers, espying Horace, called out in passing,
"A-fray-ed of his mit-tens!" Horace flinched at this renewal, and the
other lad paused to taunt him again. Horace scooped some snow, moulded
it into a ball, and flung it at the other. "Ho!" cried the boy,
"you're an Indian, are you? Hey, fellers, here's an Indian that ain't
been killed yet." He and Horace engaged in a duel in which both were
in such haste to mould snowballs that they had little time for aiming.

Horace once struck his opponent squarely in the chest. "Hey," he
shouted, "you're dead. You can't fight any more, Pete. I killed you.
You're dead."

The other boy flushed red, but he continued frantically to make
ammunition. "You never touched me!" he retorted, glowering. "You never
touched me! Where, now?" he added, defiantly. "Where did you hit me?"

"On the coat! Right on your breast! You can't fight any more! You're
dead!"

"You never!"

"I did, too! Hey, fellers, ain't he dead? I hit 'im square!"

"He never!"

Nobody had seen the affair, but some of the boys took sides in
absolute accordance with their friendship for one of the concerned
parties. Horace's opponent went about contending, "He never touched
me! He never came near me! He never came near me!"

The formidable leader now came forward and accosted Horace. "What was
you? An Indian? Well, then, you're dead--that's all. He hit you. I saw
him."

"Me?" shrieked Horace. "He never came within a mile of me----"

At that moment he heard his name called in a certain familiar tune of
two notes, with the last note shrill and prolonged. He looked towards
the sidewalk, and saw his mother standing there in her widow's weeds,
with two brown paper parcels under her arm. A silence had fallen upon
all the boys. Horace moved slowly towards his mother. She did not seem
to note his approach; she was gazing austerely off through the naked
branches of the maples where two crimson sunset bars lay on the deep
blue sky.

At a distance of ten paces Horace made a desperate venture. "Oh, ma,"
he whined, "can't I stay out for a while?"

"No," she answered solemnly, "you come with me." Horace knew that
profile; it was the inexorable profile. But he continued to plead,
because it was not beyond his mind that a great show of suffering now
might diminish his sufferi