BY MATTHEW WHITE, JUN.
Percy Vance was a stranger in the town and a new scholar at the grammar school. His age was set down in the roll-book as twelve, but judging from his height the girls thought he must be past fifteen, while the boys, after noting the slimness of his figure, the paleness of his face, and the timid look in his great gray eyes, declared he could not be over ten.
None of the lads had ever seen him run, and as for playing games, Ted Harley affirmed that he "didn't know a marble from a top."
But there was something the new-comer did know, and that was his lessons; so it was not long before he stood at the head of several classes.
"He must study straight along from the time school's out till supper, and I say it isn't fair," Dan Tregwin was wont to complain; "for a fellow who wants to have some fun now and then don't stand any chance at all."
But the boys soon forgot all about "Percy, the Prig," as he was called by some, in the joys of the first big snow-storm the town had been favored with for several years.
In the afternoon of the day succeeding the storm Ted Harley and Dan Tregwin were taking turns dragging one another on Ted's long "coaster" toward the steepest hill in town, when Dan suddenly stopped so short that the sled caught him by the legs and threw him down.
"Well, what next?" he exclaimed, as he picked himself up. "Here's Percy Vance actually coasting!" And he called Ted's attention to a boy rapidly approaching them down a side street.
As he reached the bottom of the slope Percy guided himself around the corner, and went skimming on in the same direction as his school-mates.
It was at this moment that an unusually loud jingle of bells was heard behind them, and as the lads swerved to one side a large handsome sleigh, drawn by four coal-black horses, passed them like a flash.