ectful.

"Josiah's our barber," said Leila. "He saved me once from a dreadful
accident. You'll like him."

"Will I?" thought John, but merely remarked, "They all seem rather
intimate."

"Why not?" said the young Republican. "Ah! here's the gate. I'll get out
and open it. It's the best gate to swing on in the whole place."

As she tossed the furs aside, John gasped, "To swing on--"

"Oh, yes. Aunt Ann says I am too old to swing on gates, but I do. It
shuts with a bang. I'll show you some day."

"What is swinging on a gate?" said John, as she jumped out and stood in
the snow laughing. Surely this was an amazing kind of boy. "Why, did you
never hear the rhyme about it?"

"No," said John, "I never did."

"Well, you just get on the gate when it's wide open and give a push, and
you sing--

"If I was the President of these United States,
I'd suck molasses candy and swing upon the gates.

"There! Then it shuts--bang!" With this bit of child folklore she
scampered away through the snow and stood holding the gate open while
Billy drove through. She reflected mischievously that it must have been
three years since she had swung on a gate.

John feeling warm and for the first time looking about him with interest
began to notice the grandeur of the rigid snow-laden pines of an
untouched forest which stood in what was now brilliant sunshine.

As Leila got into the sleigh, she said, "Now, Billy, go slowly when you
make the short turn at the house. If you upset us, I--I'll kill you."

"Yes, miss. Guess I'll drive all right." But the ways of drivers are
everywhere the same, and to come to the end of a drive swiftly with crack
of whip was an unresisted temptation.

"_Sang de Dieu!_" cried John, "we will be upset."

"We are," shouted Leila. The horse was down, the sleigh on its side, and
the cousins disappeared in a huge drift piled high when the road was
cleared.

CHAPTER II

John was the first to return to the outer world. He stood still, seeing
the horse on its legs, Billy unharnessing, Leila for an instant lost to
sight. The boy was scared. In his ordered life it was an unequalled
experience. Then he saw a merry face above the drift and lying around it
a wide-spread glory of red hair on the white snow. In after years he
would recall the beauty of the laughing young face in its setting of dark
gold and sunlit silver snow.

"Oh, my!" she cried. "That Billy! Don't stand there, John; pull me out,
I'm stu