"Mabel an' I are goin' to make our Christmas presents together, andshe's expecting me."
"Shucks! 'Twon't be fit for a girl to go out if it snows," said Mother Atterson.
But Hiram saw that Sister was much disappointed, and he had tried to be kinder to her since that night of the corn husking.
"What's a little snow? " he demanded, laughing. "Bundle up good, Sister, and I'll go over with you. I want to see Henry, anyway.""Crazy young'uns," observed Mother Atterson. But she made no real objection. Whatever Hiram said was right, in the old lady's eyes.
They tramped through the snowy fields with a lantern, and found it half-knee deep in some drifts before they arrived at the Pollocks, short as had been the duration of the fall.
But they were welcomed vociferously at the neighbor's; preparations were made for a long evening's fun; for with the snow coming down so steadily there would be little work done out of doors the following day, so the family need not seek their beds early.
The Pollock children had made a good store of nuts, like the squirrels; and there was plenty of corn to pop, and molasses for candy, or corn-balls, and red apples to roast, and sweet cider from the casks in the cellar.
The older girls retired to a corner of the wide hearth with their work- boxes, and Hiram and Henry worked out several problems regarding the latter's eleven-week course at the agricultural college, which would begin the following week; while the young ones played games until they fell fast asleep in odd corners of the big kitchen.
It was nearly midnight, indeed, when Hiram and Sister started home. And it was still snowing, and snowing heavily.
"We'll have to get all the plows out to-morrow morning!" Henry shouted after them from the porch.
And it was no easy matter to wade home through the heavy drifts.
"I never could have done it without you, Hi," declared the girl, when she finally floundered onto the Atterson porch, panting and laughing.
"I'll take a look around the barns before I come in," remarked the careful young farmer.
This was a duty he never neglected, no matter how late he went to bed,nor how tired he was. Half way to the barn he halted. A light was waving wildly by the Dickerson back door.
It was a lantern, and Hiram knew that it was being whirled around and around somebody's head. He thought he heard, too, a shouting through the falling snow.
"Something's wrong over yonder," thought the young farmer.
He hesitated but for a moment. He had never stepped upon the Dickerson place, nor spoken to Sam Dickerson since the trouble about the turkeys. The lantern continued to swing. Eagerly as the snow came down, it could not blind Hiram to the waving light.
"I've got to see about this," he muttered, and started as fast as he could go through the drifts, across the fields.
Soon he heard the voice shouting. It was Sam Dickerson. And he evidently had been shouting to Hiram, seeing his lantern in the distance.
"Help, Strong! Help!" he called.
"What is it, man?" demanded Hiram, climbing the last pair of bars and struggling through the drifts in the dooryard.
"Will you take my horse and go for the doctor? I don't know where Pete is--down to Cale Schell's, I expect.""What's the matter, Mr. Dickerson?"
"Sarah's fell down the bark stairs--fell backward. Struck her head an' ain't spoke since. Will you go, Mr. Strong?""Certainly. Which horse will I take?"
"The bay's saddled-under the shed--get any doctor--I don't care which one. But get him here.""I will, Mr. Dickerson. Leave it to me," promised Hiram, and ran to the shed at once.
