With body bent slightly forward he took the first gentle slope and felt the exhilarating sensation of gathering speed as his skis carried him away from his friends. It was something between flying through the air and riding on the top of an undulating wave of water. Following Ted Norris' example he sent a shout back to the group on the crest and then gave himself completely to the joy of meeting each surprise of the snow with the proper adjustment of body and limbs that would enable him to make the descent in one unbroken slide. He had never taken so swift a flight,—it was as if he were rushing through space with scarcely any realization of the landscape round him.
Midway in The Slide, Teeny-bits suddenly found himself dodging a thicket of small spruce trees. He escaped them by swerving quickly, but he went too far to the left. Other small trees confronted him; his body brushed sharply against the branches, and then looming before him was an old monarch of the forest that somehow had escaped when the slide had scarred the mountain-side. Its gnarled branches, standing out vaguely in the half-light of the moon and stars like the arms of an octopus, seemed to Teeny-bits to rise up and seize him. He had the feeling that something was lifting him into the air, that he was going up and up into the silver face of the moon. It seemed also that at the same time there was a flash of light followed immediately by darkness.
One after another the ski runners at the top of The Slide took off and shot swiftly down the slope. None of them saw the huddled form at the foot of the ancient oak and it was only when the four had joined Ted Norris at the bottom of The Slide that they realized that something must have happened to Teeny-bits.
"Didn't any of you see him on the way down?" asked Ted Norris. "Maybe he broke his skis."
"He would have yelled at us, wouldn't he?" said one of the Williams brothers; "we'd better go back and look around."
It was not a difficult matter even in the indistinct night light to follow the marks of the skis. From the foot of the slide they mounted slowly, tracing backward the five double tracks and finally coming to the sixth, halfway down from the crest.
