“I do, too, hear ’em!” Artie insisted. “There, Fred Williamson! I guess you’ll believe me now!”
“Hello! Hello!” bellowed a hearty voice, and sleighbells crashed as the voice shouted “Whoa!”
“It isn’t Christmas,” Fred heard Artie mutter to himself, and that sent the older boy into fits of laughter.
“You bet it isn’t Christmas,” Fred declared, and not for anything in the world would he have admitted that the same thought had crossed his mind—a picture of gay and gallant Santa Claus, clad in a jolly red suit, driving his reindeer over the snow.
Ward, who didn’t mind the cold, had hopped out of his cot and was leaping, like an antelope, toward the tent door, his sleeping bag a decided handicap.
“It’s Mr. Meade,” he reported, after a brief look. “He’s got two horses harnessed to a long bobsled—at least it looks like a bobsled. Mr. Williamson is down talking to him. Hurry and get dressed!”
CHAPTER XI
ARTIE’S ADVENTURE
The way those boys shot into their clothes would have been a revelation to their mothers, who sometimes had to call them three times before they came down to breakfast on a school morning. In less than five minutes they were down at the bridge and across it.
“Morning!” said Mr. Meade, heartily. “Thought you’d be up. I’m going up in the woods to cut logs, and I says to my wife, ‘If those children haven’t been up in the woods in a deep snow, they might like the trip.’”
“They haven’t had breakfast yet,” said Mr. Williamson, smiling.