inter day when I was a boy. I got a dollar for it and
come as nigh bein' froze ter death as ever a boy did and save his
bacon."

"Do tell us about it, Walky," said Janice, who was wiping the supper
dishes for her aunt.

"I should say it was a soft job--five pounds of feathers!" burst out
Marty.

"How fur did you haf to travel, Walky?" asked Aunt 'Mira.

"Twelve mile over the snow and ice, me without snowshoes and it thirty
below zero. Yes, sir!" went on Walky, beginning to stuff the tobacco
into his own pipe from Mr. Day's proffered sack. "That was some job!
Miz Bob Kittridge, the old lady's darter-in-law, give me the dollar
_and_ the job; and I done it.

"The old lady lived over behind this here very mountain, all alone on
the Kittridge farm. The tracks was jest natcherly blowed over and hid
under more snow than ye ever see in a Winter nowadays. I believe there
was five foot on a level in the woods.

"There'd been a rain; then she'd froze up ag'in," pursued Walky. "It
put a crust on the snow, but I had no idee it had made the ice rotten.
And with Mr. Mercury creepin' down to thirty below--jefers-pelters!
I'd no idee Mink Creek had open air-holes in it. I ain't never
understood it to this day.

"Wal, sir! ye know where Mink Creek crosses the road to Kittridge's,
Jason?"

Mr. Day nodded. "I know the place, Walky," he agreed.

"That's where it happened," said Walky Dexter, nodding his head many
times. "I was crossin' the stream, thinkin' nothin' could happen, and
'twas jest at sunup. I'd come six mile, and was jest ha'f way to the
farm. I kerried that piller-case over my shoulder, and slung from the
other shoulder was a gun, and I had a hatchet in my belt.

"Jefers-pelters! All of a suddint I slumped down, right through the
snow-crust, and douced up ter my middle inter the coldest water I ever
felt I did, for a fac'!

"I sprung out o' that right pert, ye kin believe; and then the next
step I went down ker-chug! ag'in--this time up ter my armpits."

"Crackey!" exclaimed Marty. "That was some slip. What did you do?"

"I got out o' that hole purty careful, now I tell ye; but I left my cap
floatin' on the open pool o' water," the expressman said. "Why, I was
a cake of ice in two minutes--and six miles from anywhere, whichever
way I turned."

"Oh, Walky!" ejaculated Janice, interested. "What ever did you do?"

"Wal, I had either to keep on or go back. Didn't much matter which.
And in them d