s spoke again. He seemed to be
considering something soberly. Finally he said, "Yes, and they need the
mill now, more than ever, with her to care for. I wonder if they'll ever
get it."

The mill passed out of mind, however, for some time, when there fell
still another great snow on the following day, heavier than the
preceding storm. It piled drift upon drift, and made the roads about
Benton, for miles in every direction, impassible. It shut each farmhouse
in upon itself; the Ellisons in their home; Colonel Witham and Granny
Thornton alone in the Half Way House. The old mill was silent for a
whole week.

Then there came a magazine to Tom Harris, bringing a timely suggestion
to the boys of Benton. It told of the snowshoe of the Norwegians, the
ski, with which a runner could travel through the deep drifts of loose
snow, and coast down the steep hills, as easily as on a toboggan. Soon,
working in spare hours, each youth had fashioned himself a pair. They
got the long, thin strips of hard wood, steamed the ends and curled them
like sled runners, sand-papered and polished them, and put on the straps
of leather to hold the toe.

They learned how to go through the drifts with these, sliding the shoe
along through the loose snow, instead of lifting the foot, as with the
Canadian snowshoe. They got each a long pole, to steady one's self with,
and practised sliding down the terraces of Tom Harris's garden, standing
erect and doing their best to keep on their feet.

When they had had their preliminary tumbles, and were proficient in the
sport, they started off one day and went along up stream; tried the
steep banks that led down on to that, and found it more exciting than
tobogganning.

Tim Reardon used his skis to get up above the dams, where the
spring-holes in the stream were. And, through the Christmas holidays, he
made his headquarters at the cabin that belonged to the canoeists, which
he kept hot by a rousing fire. Day after day, he set out from there,
skiing his way up stream, dragging after him a toboggan on which was
loaded a pail half filled with water. In this swam his live bait,
winnows that he had caught through the ice in the brook. Also he carried
an axe, a borrowed ice chisel, some lines and other stuff.

One might have seen him there, through the afternoons, watching sharply
the five lines that he tended, and varying the monotony of waiting by an
occasional ski slide down the neighbouring bank.

He had fi