and elsewhere.

Will Somers appeared in the dress of a revolutionary soldier, carrying on
his shoulder a musket that was a fire-lock, and slung at his side was a
powder-horn, while in his tinder-box were flint and steel. How many
battles this old Continental had been in, what victories he had won, and
what hardships he had endured! He was not slow to tell of them all.

The entertainment was voted a great success.

"There, Charles Pitt," declared Aunt Stanshy the next morning at the
breakfast-table, "I like that style of a club ever so much. It tells you
something."

"Yes," said Charlie, "I know a lot more than I did."

"I want you to have a good time in your club, but when it is all play and
nothing else, it aint just the thing."

"Yes, aunty," said the now matured and venerable Charlie. "And we're going
to have something else."

"What is it?"

He only winked and looked wise as an owl at midnight.

December was now hurrying away. The winter weeks followed one another
rapidly, and at last Charlie heard Mr. Walton say in church something
about a Christmas festival.

"Christmas is coming!" was Charlie's silent response.

What a Christmas it was! Two nights previous to it the club had an
entertainment in behalf of missions, as Miss Barry had suggested. Dressed
as that benevolent individual, Santa Claus, different members of the club
stepped forward and gave an account of Christmas in Germany, Christmas in
Russia, Christmas in Italy, and Christmas in Australia. The boys were
curious to see how much money they had made.

"Twenty dollars!" declared Sid, who counted the funds.

"There," said Miss Barry, "the Up-the-Ladder Club will put rounds under
the feet of boys in heathen lands, and help them climb up into the light
of a Saviour's presence."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE WRECK.

Snow still kept away, but winter winds had come, and they swept over the
bare ground, cutting like knives. About the first of the year the weather
softened. The old gray heads, whose possessors occupied that
village-throne of wisdom, the jackknife-carved bench by Silas Trefethen's
stove, prophesied "a spell of weather."

"Storm brewin'! I feel it in my bones," declared Simes Badger, squinting
at the vane on Aunt Stanshy's barn and then at the gray, scowling clouds
above. The wind was from the "nor'-east." It had a damp, chilly touch, so
that the people shrank from it, and were glad to get near their cozy
fires. All day threatenin