nded directly in the man's face!

CHAPTER X

A MIDNIGHT FEAST

"My gracious, Bess, see what you have done!" cried Nan.

"You certainly hit the bull's eye that time," was Rhoda's comment.

"Oh!" was the only word Bess could utter, and she stood there in the
roadway, her arm still poised high in the air as when she had thrown the
snowball.

"Hi, you! Wot yer mean by heavin' snowballs at me?" screamed the man, as
he wiped the snow from his face. "You let me alone! I ain't done no
harm, I ain't."

He waved his hands wildly in the air. The girls now noticed that he was
in tatters and had a very red nose, doubtless made redder than ever by
the snowball.

"Come, move on now," said a voice from the smithy, and a tall man
wearing a leather apron appeared. "I told you before I'd not have you
hanging around here. Git!"

"I ain't gonner be snowballed!" cried the tramp, for such he was.
"Tain't fair. I'm an honest man, I am. You lemme alone."

"I'll do worse than snowball you if you don't clear out, and that mighty
quick," cried the blacksmith. "I know what you came in this place
for--you came to steal horseshoes and then sell 'em over to Beavertown."

"I didn't--I came in to git warm," sniveled the tramp. But then, as the
blacksmith reached for a whip, he fairly ran down the snowy road and out
of sight.

"Wasn't I lucky?" said Bess, when the girls had explained matters to the
blacksmith and moved on once more in the direction of the hall. "Only a
tramp, and it might have been the blacksmith himself!"

"Well, we admit your aim was good," answered Nan drily.

As they made their way back to the school the girls talked over the
matter of Mrs. Bragley's property. They came across Grace in the hall,
and, bearing her off to Nan's room, told her the story of Sunny Slopes.

"Why!" exclaimed Grace, as a thought suddenly struck her, "I'll have dad
look that up while we're down at Palm Beach. You know he's a lawyer.
Maybe Sunny Slopes isn't far from where we'll be staying. I'll get him
to see what he can do."

"That will be perfectly darling!" exclaimed Nan enthusiastically, and
the others heartily agreed with her.

The next day, while returning from town where they had been stocking up
for the feast they had promised themselves, they again met Walter Mason.

"Hello, girls," he called, as he came up to them.

"Hello, Palm Beach," returned Laura.

"So you've heard about it, have you?" Walter responded, with a