“I caught my sister’s dress, pulling her toward the opening with all the strength that was left in me, and fell out after her into the old man’s arms.
“That is why I say,” concluded Mr. Colchester, as he looked round upon us with a smile, “that it was a girl’s wit that kept me from being baked like a biscuit. And that is the reason why I say that a girl’s wit is the best in a tight place—providing the place is tight enough.”
ON A SLIDE-BOARD
By Robert Barnes
At three o’clock on an August morning the press in the little printing-office on the summit ceased its clatter, and Corey Green brought out a bundle of Stars, wrapped in enameled cloth, to Bart Collamore.
“Here’s your five hundred,” said Corey, “hot from the types.”
“All right,” replied Bart “They’ll be on the hotel counters twenty miles away by six.”
They walked down the platform before the Summit House. A dim light illumined the office, but the rest of the long building was dark. Only two other persons were awake—Frank Simmons, busy over the printing-press, and Luke Martin, the hotel watchman.
Overhead an occasional star glimmered through the driving wrack, and the low east disclosed the first faint tokens of a cloudy dawn; but in the west frowned a vaporous battlement, black and threatening, from which a strong wind was tearing detached masses and rolling them against the mountainside. Now and then a few flakes of snow flew by on the raw gale.