e hurled violently after them as he pulled up.

Having thus triumphantly put the enemy to flight, the party continued
their ascent of the hill, and soon gained the summit.

"There it is!" shouted Fred, who, in company with Mivins, first crossed
the ridge, and tossed his arms in the air.

The men cheered loudly as they hurried up and one by one emerged into a
red glow of sunshine. It could not be termed _warm_, for it had no power
in that frosty atmosphere, and only a small portion of the sun's disk
was visible. But his _light_ was on every crag and peak around; and as
the men sat down in groups, and, as it were, bathed in the sunshine,
winking at the bright gleam of light with half-closed eyes, they
declared that it _felt_ warm, and wouldn't hear anything to the
contrary, although Saunders, true to his nature, endeavoured to prove to
them that the infinitely small degree of heat imparted by such feeble
rays could not by any possibility be _felt_ except in imagination. But
Saunders was outvoted. Indeed, under the circumstances, he had not a
chance of proving his point; for the more warm the dispute became, the
greater was the amount of animal heat that was created, to be placed,
falsely, to the credit of the sun.

Patience, however, is a virtue which is sure to meet with a reward. The
point which Saunders failed to prove by argument, was pretty well proved
to every one (though not admitted) by the agency of John Frost. That
remarkably bitter individual nestled round the men as they sat sunning
themselves, and soon compelled them to leap up and apply to other
sources for heat. They danced about vigorously, and again took to
leap-frog. Then they tried their powers at the old familiar games of
home. Hop-step-and-jump raised the animal thermometer considerably, and
the standing leap, running leap, and high leap sent it up many degrees.
But a general race brought them almost to a summer temperature, and at
the same time, most unexpectedly, secured to them a hare! This little
creature, of which very few had yet been procured, darted in an evil
hour out from behind a rock right in front of the men, who, having begun
the race for sport, now continued it energetically for profit. A dozen
sticks were hurled at the luckless hare, and one of these felled it to
the ground.

After this they returned home in triumph, keeping up all the way an
animated dispute as to the amount of heat shed upon them by the sun, and
upon that knotty