train to Sheridan and an hour by sleigh to the
Norris cabin at Pocassett, a little settlement of camps and cottages at
the foot of the Whiteface range of mountains. In the early afternoon
Neil and Teeny-bits had arrived in the snow-covered country and were
receiving the greetings of their Jefferson School friends. Ted Norris
had driven down to the station to meet them in a two-seated sleigh and
had brought with him Whipple, whom both Teeny-bits and Neil remembered
as the Jefferson punter.

"How do you fellows feel--pretty husky?" asked Norris as they were going
back toward the mountains. "Some of the crowd up at the camp want to
tramp over the range on snowshoes to-night if it's clear and I didn't
know but what we'd join them."

"That sounds good to me," declared Neil. "Teeny-bits and I have been
leading the social life down in Dellsport and we're all fed up with
parties and so on."

"Sounds good to me, too," said Teeny-bits, although he had to admit to
himself that he wasn't exactly "fed up" with the good time in Dellsport.

The Norris place was a cabin built of spruce logs with an immense stone
fireplace at one end of a long living room,--a comfortable backwoods
place where one felt very close to the out-of-doors. Here the new
arrivals found awaiting them Phillips, another member of the Jefferson
eleven, and an athletic looking middle-aged man whom Norris introduced
as his uncle, Wolcott Norris. There was no one else at the cabin except
Peter Kearns, the cook and helper.

"It's all fixed up for to-night," said the older Norris; "we're going up
the gulf and over the shoulder of Whiteface and then down to the Cliff
House, where a sleigh will meet us and bring us back."

That evening tramp over the slopes of Whiteface Mountain was the
beginning of a wonderful series of winter sports at Pocassett. The party
that made the climb consisted of the six from the Norris place and twice
as many more from other cabins and cottages that nestled in the snow at
the foot of the mountains. While the growing moon hung overhead and shed
its silver radiance over the white world, the snowshoers climbed the
gulf by way of a trail that led among spruces and hemlocks, then up and
out to the great, bare shoulder of the mountain. Gaining the ridge, they
crossed and went plunging, sliding and leaping down in the soft snow
that clothed the farther slope. It was a night to make one's blood run
fast, and the whole crowd came back to the sett