e conscious before very long."

But hour after hour passed and Teeny-bits did not regain his senses. He
lay in a stupor, occasionally muttering thick and unintelligible words.

"There's no need of you fellows staying up," said Wolcott Norris at
midnight. "The doctor and I will be here with Teeny-bits and the best
thing you can do is go to bed."

After a time the Williams brothers went home and Whipple and Phillips
followed the mining engineer's advice. Neil Durant and Ted Norris,
however, refused to leave the room where Teeny-bits lay. They sat
together by the fireplace and waited for an encouraging word from the
surgeon.

"I know he'll pull through," said Neil. "He's as tough as a wildcat."

"Some boy!" said the big son of Jefferson. "He's the real goods. Oh,
he's got to come out of it."

Finally these two friends, who had fought each other so valiantly only a
few weeks before, dozed off sitting there side by side, with the ruddy
light of the fireplace on their faces.

They awoke simultaneously. The gray light of morning had begun to
penetrate the camp windows, and Teeny-bits was sitting up on the couch,
looking about him as if he had been awakened from a puzzling dream.

"What did I do with the skis?" he asked and, raising his hands to his
bandaged head, gazed at his friends in bewilderment.

The doctor and Wolcott Norris, Neil and Ted were beside the cot in an
instant.

"It's all right, old man!" said Neil. "You got a thump on your head
coming down the slide."

"It feels----" Teeny-bits began. But his head was too heavy; the
shadow of a smile crossed his face and lying back on the pillow he
closed his eyes.

"We must keep very quiet," said the surgeon. "He'll sleep now and be the
better for it."

CHAPTER XIV

A TALE OF THE FAR EAST

It was as Doctor Emmons predicted: Teeny-bits slept half the morning
through and awoke with a clear look in his eyes that indicated at once
to his friends that his dazed condition had passed.

"What did I hit?" he asked.

"A big oak tree," said Ted Norris.

"I knocked it down, didn't I?" asked Teeny-bits. "My head feels as if I
did."

His friends laughed with a happy abandon in which there was a quality
that expressed release from a great fear.

Under the doctor's orders Teeny-bits remained in bed the rest of the
week, though he declared on the second day that he was feeling fit and
wanted to get up. Meanwhile the holidays came to an end. Phillips and
W