The Dozen from Lakerim

by Rupert Hughes

Far in the distance he thought he saw a fine, high bluff, and he hurried toward it with delicious expectation. When he had reached the brink he looked down and saw that the bluff ended in a little body of water hardly big enough to be called a lake. After measuring the drop with his eye, and deciding that while it was higher than anything he had ever shot before, it was just risky enough to be exciting, he went back several steps, came forward with a good impetus, and launched himself fearlessly into the air like the aëronaughty Darius Green.

He launched himself fearlessly enough, but he was no sooner in mid-air than he began to regret his rashness. It was rather late now, though, to be thinking of that, and he realized that nothing could save him from having a sudden meeting with the bottom of the hill.

He lost his nerve in his excitement, and crossed his skies, so that when he struck, instead of sailing forward like the wind, he stuck and went headforemost. Fortunately, one of his skies broke—instead of most of his bones; and a very kind-hearted snow-bank appeared like a feather-bed, and somewhat checked the force of his fall. But, for all that, he was soon rolling over and over down the hill, and he landed finally on a thin spot in the ice of the lake, and crashed through into the water up to his waist.

Now he was so panic-stricken that he scrambled frantically out. He cast one sorry glance up the hill, and saw there the pieces into which his ski had cracked, as well as the pathway he himself had cleared in the snow as he came tumbling down. Then he looked for the other ski, and realised that it was far away under the ice.

He was now so cold, that, dripping as he was, he would not have waded into the lake again to grope around for the other ski if that ski had been solid gold studded with diamonds.

Plainly, the only thing to do was to make for home, and that right quickly, before night came on and he lost his way, and the pneumonia got him.

It was a very different story, trudging back through the snow-drifts in the twilight, from flitting like a butterfly on the ski. He realized now that his legs were tired from the long run he had enjoyed so much. He lost his way, too, time and again; and when he came to a cross-roads and had to guess for himself which path to take, somehow or other he seemed always to take the wrong one, and to plod along it until he met some farmer to put him on the right path to Kingston. But though he met many a farmer, he seemed to find never a wagon going his way, or even a hospitable-looking farm-house.

He was still miles away from Kingston when lamp-lighting time came. A little gleam came cheerfully toward him out of the dark. He hurried to it, thinking of the fine supper the kind-hearted farmers would doubtless give him, when, just as he reached the gate of the door-yard, there was a most blood-curdling uproar, and two or three furious dogs came bounding shadowily toward him.

He lost no time in deciding that supper, after all, was a rather useless invention, and Kingston much preferable.

Previously to this, Quiz had always understood that the dog was the most kind-hearted of animals, but it was months after that night before he could hear the mere name of a canine without shuddering.