Before breakfast they had built a dozen barrel-stave toboggans—each long enough to hold two persons, if it was so desired.
Tom and Bobbins tried them first and showed the crowd how fine a slide it really was down the long, grassy bank. The most timid girl in the crowd finally was convinced that it was safe, and for several hours, the shrieks of delight and laughter from that hillside proved that a sport out of season was all the better appreciated because it was novel.
Over the broad stone wall was the pasture in which Caslon kept his flock of goats. Beautiful, long-haired creatures they were, but the solemn old leader of the flock stamped his feet at the curious girls and boys who looked over the wall, and shook his horns.
Somewhere, along by the boundary of the two estates, Bob said there was a spring, and Ruth and Helen slipped off by themselves to find it. A wild bit of brush pasture soon hid them from the view of their friends, and as they went over a small ridge and down into the deeper valley, the laughter and shouting of those at the slide gradually died away behind them.
The girls had to cross the stone wall to get at the spring, and they did not remember that in doing so they were “out of bounds.” Bob had said nothing about the spring being on the Caslon side of the boundary.
Once beside the brook, Helen must needs explore farther. There were lovely trees and flowering bushes, and wild strawberries in a small meadow that lured the two girls on. They were a long way from the stone fence when, of a sudden, a crashing in the bushes behind them brought both Ruth and Helen to their feet.
“My! what’s that?” demanded Helen.
“Sounds like some animal.”
Ruth’s remark was not finished.
“The goat! it’s the old billy!” sang out Helen, and turned to run as the horned head of the bewhiskered leader of the Angora herd came suddenly into view.