"All right," said Ellis, shouldering his sled; "Howard, where's your skates?"
"Oh, bother! they're at the top of that awful hill. Never mind; you walk on slowly, and I'll run back and get them."
The boys obeyed, and Ellis Holbrook was just swinging open the little gate that led to Mr. Minturn's grounds, when Howard called, as he ran down the hill, "Hold on! Don't go that way, it will lead you right through the deepest snow there is; take the big gate." And by the time he reached them, panting and breathless, they were at the big gate.
"This is jolly," said Will Bailey, throwing himself into a great arm-chair before the glowing fire. "My! I believe I'm a snowball."
"You'd have been an icicle if you had gone the way Ellis was leading you; why, the snow is so high," said Howard, raising his hand almost on a level with his head.
Ellis laughed. "I'm sure I thought I was going right," he said. "I must have been thinking of yesterday's lesson in Sunday school,—'Enter ye in at the strait gate.'"
"Ho!" said Will Bailey; "for that matter, one gate is as straight as the other."
"You don't understand the Bible, my boy," said Howard, laying his hand on Will's shoulder with a provoking little pat, "or you'd know that strait means narrow."
"I'll bet a dollar that you were no wiser yourself until father explained the verse yesterday," said Ellis, laughing.
Tip, meantime, stood apart flushed and silent; he knew about the Sunday lesson, and remembered the solemn talk which Mr. Holbrook gave them; and remembered how he urged them, while they were young, to enter into that strait gate; he felt shocked and troubled at the sound of Ellis's careless words.