"What's that on his finger?" demanded Elma. "It looks as if it were bleeding."
It was the juice of the strawberry-jam! Paul first tasted delicately with the tip of his tongue, then he boldly bit the finger off and swallowed it.
"Why, what made you do that?" asked the others.
"Jam!" was the succinct reply.
"Jam! Impossible. How could our snow-man get at any jam? It couldn't be that."
"Tastes like it, any way," remarked Paul.
"I can't think what has happened to spoil him so," said Elma, plaintively. "Do you think a loose horse can have got into the yard during the night? See how the snow is trampled down!"
"Hallo, look here!" shouted Reggie. "This is the queerest thing yet. There's the other half the gun sticking out half-way up the clematis frame!"
"It must have been a horse," said Elma, who having once settled on the idea found it hard to give it up. "It couldn't be anything else."
"Oh, yes, it could. It was no horse. It was me," said Snowy Peter in the depths of his being, where a little warmth still lingered.