"I say!" cried Jack. "What do you keep in this field, sir? Was it a torpedo, or an electric eel?"
"It's your uncle's field, young man!" replied Mr. Merryweather. "I suspect it was nothing more than a rock, however. I thought the hill was all smooth grass."
"You might try it, sir!" said Gerald. "If there is a sound bone in my body, write me down Hollander. How are you, Ferrers? Anything broken?"
"No, indeed! Lost a button, and—where is my other mitten? Oh! thank you, Hilda! Did we make a pretty picture, flying through the air?"
"Lovely!" said Hilda. "If I had only had my camera! But I was really frightened. I am hardly sure now that you are not killed, you did go so very hard!"
"The toboggan is killed!" said Gerald, ruefully. "Kindling-wood, poor old thing! Just look at it!" He dragged to light some forlorn remnants, which certainly did not look as if they could be of service again save in some humble capacity.
"Too bad!" said his father. "Fortune of war, my boy! But there is plenty of room for you and Ferrers on the two others. We must see about this stone, and get it out of the way."
Search revealed a big, jagged stone, so fitted into the slope of the hill that the snow had lain smoothly over it; but it had caught the toboggan in mid-flight. It was soon torn from its bed, rolled down the hill, and deposited on the other side of the wall. Then they all climbed the hill again, trying as they went to sing the Tobogganing Song; failing for lack of breath, panting, singing again, and all the while struggling upward, laughing and chattering and pelting each other with the soft snow.
"When the field lies clear in the moon, boy,
And the wood hangs dark on the hill,
When the long white way shows never a sleigh,
And the sound of the bells is still,
"Then hurry, hurry, hurry!
And bring the toboggans along!
A last 'Never fear!' to Mother-my-dear,
Then off with a shout and a song.
"A-tilt on the billowy slope, boy,
Like a boat that bends to the sea,
With the heart a-tilt in your breast, boy,
And your chin well down on your knee,
"Then over, over, over,
As the boat skims over the main,
A plunge and a swoop, a gasp and a whoop,
And away o'er the glittering plain!
"The boat, and the bird, and the breeze, boy,
Which the poet is apt to sing,
Are old and slow and clumsy, I know,
By us that have never a wing.
"Still onward, onward, onward,
Till the brook joins the meadow below,
And then with a shout, see us tumbling out,
To plunge in the feathery snow.
"Back now by the side of the hedge, boy,
Where the roses in summer grow,
Where the snow lies deep o'er their winter sleep,
Up, up the big hill we go.
"And stumbling, tumbling, stumbling,
Hurrah! 'tis the top we gain!
Draw breath for a minute before you begin it—
Now over, and over again!"
"How are you, noble Hetman?" said Hildegarde, finding herself near Gerald, as they gained the top of the hill. "Aren't you all full of snow, my poors, and very cold and wet?"