Of course Dean looked over the outfit that evening with a most superior and intolerant eye. He is a member of the

one named Ellefsen, and the Black Forest and Balata, whatever or whoever she "That's not a wide-welted double

was.

Swiss Alpine Club, or something, and he never lets one forget it.

"U-m-m," he said, "the Huitfeldt binding is better."

"Yes," I returned, resenting his airs; "but how about the Dummkopf?"

"Never heard of it," said Dean, without batting an eye. Then he went into a long dissertation on heel-strap, toestrap, long-strap, short-strap, and toeirons. He made me try on the snakylooking things, and the iron entered my soul as well as my toe.

He then continued his interminable

sole," he said, squinting at my expensive footgear. "It will buckle at the waist of the foot." I saw no buckles, and I had never heard before that a foot had a waist. It was getting to be as bad as mechanics. He also recommended goatskin socks and "scafe" rubber studs. Just for a moment I thought the first reference was intended insultingly, but he was so deadly serious that I decided it was a joke. Of course Elsie was simply eating him up with her eyes, and I could see that she thought he was perfectly marvelous. Then he found

something simply terrible. The color The color was bad and would collect snow. The grain on the soles was all wrong. Wax was essential. I did n't know wax was essential. Then he began jabbering about sealskin for the soles on mountain trips, and Rucksacks and ptarmigans and edelweiss and all sorts of other foreign flowers. He up-ended the frightful things, and talked about their reaching to the roots of his fingers. There again! Fingers had roots with him, and feet had waists, and souls had grains! It was perfectly ghastly. I left early. Of course he said he 'd exchange them for me, and I was glad enough to leave them with him.

Well, we got up to Piny Crest. Elsie's father, it seemed, had learned how to "she" in Switzerland, and, although he was rusty at it, he was anxious to try. There was another girl, Dorothy Knowles, who seemed half-way sensible. She said she would n't try it "for worlds." But then she got away with it because she was a good tobogganer. You know, Iwell, to be perfectly frank, I hate the winter, anyway. I think the "beautiful snow" is about the least rationally explicable of all God's works. I see no sense to it at all. I always

get severe colds in the spring, and as for all this ruddy-cheek business out in the frigid drifts of that senseless, blinding whiteness, the merit of it quite escapes me. A club in the winter is all right on the inside. You need n't look out of the window, and the place is usually warm. Snow is merely our annual penance. It has the awful inertia of death. It simply blots out everything, covers up everything, makes one dig holes and tunnels to find anything. And yet people still like to go out and

roll in it and get it into their eyes and ears and down their necks and up their sleeves. Not a chap that I 've ever had speaks well of it.

But they got me all rigged up in

"It was head-first this time"

Of

blanket-like things and cardigans and mufflers and a toboggan-cap that made me look extremely undignified, and we started out into a sort of boreal Sahara. Dean carried my "shes," and I flopped away on a pair of what I called "snowshoes" and he called "rackets." course he had to call them something out of their name. I got quite behind the party, who all had their "shes" on already, and Dean caught me up on my pluralizing, and said that there was no "s" in the plural-just like sheep. Then

I wonder if you ever tried to stamp at right angles to the surface with each of your feet cumbered by the sweep of a racing-shell. I did the best I could. "You 're herring-boning!" shouted Dean. "Don't herring-bone! We'll

come to that later."

So we had already come to it! The trouble was, how to be able to forget it. My feet were wide apart, and each "she" was headed in an opposite direction. It is an intensely Inquisitional feeling. One of

the "shes" slipped, and I disappeared again.

I suppose the ob

ject of the things is to keep you on the surface of the snow, but all my experience had been this deep-sea diving. I was tired of it.

"Well, let 's try you down the slope," said Dean, cheerily, when I was righted. "Now, don't be a stickrider. That's worse even than a zigzagcrawler." With this admonition, and another to keep my knees close together and stand up, he started me. Of course I crouched and leaned heavily on my stick with both hands, but it did keep me from another bath. The slope was very gentle, but at that it seemed that I had a couple of electric eels attached to my feet. On the flat he came up to me. After a piercing gaze, which I returned, he tried me across the level.

into her mouth, so I suddenly straightened up and assumed a nonchalant attitude. After all, one might as well carry it off with some verve. I took the steps and swung the sticks, but I did n't get the slide. I might have known it. The things got crossed in front. It was

head-first this time.

They left me alone for a while after that. I inched along, trying to "edge in relation to myself." Well, that 's what he had been talking about. Did you ever try "to edge in relation to yourself"? Well, do try it some time. Oh, the excitement of it is almost hysterical. Personally,

"An easy lunge," he said. "That 's the step, long and easy. Take three running. Swing the sticks forward, and push off with the third step. You'll get a long slide."

I saw Elsie stuffing her handkerchief

I think it should be confined to theoretical demonstration in the classroom-or the bar.

Dean was showing Elsie how to do a kick-turn, though, from where I lay, it looked as if she could easily qualify in the Follies if she persisted. Then he came down at full speed within about five inches of me and performed a Christiania swing. He also did a "stemming turn" and "ran a trav

erse." The man was really gifted. And he kept talking about the telemark as if it were the telephone. Then he and Mr. Searl, Elsie's father, began to speak heavily about jumping, both agreeing that, after all, jumping was absolutely the only man's sport in "sheing." And the light of life dimmed irrevocably for

me.

That afternoon they got a sort of trestle erected, a kind of long platform. I thought at first that it was intended for what in golf we call "the gallery" to watch all this jumping from. They

had n't even invited me to jump. At first I was glad of it, and then it slightly irritated me. After all, Elsie had signified that she intended to jump. Everyone else seemed to be going to jump. They were all putting on their jumpers, or whatever you call them, and Dean was busily arranging everything. No one referred to my morning's work, although I had already put in what I would have certainly been willing to call "a day." So I had made up my mind at least to try the jump, when I found that one did it from that trestle business-just flopped off into the air. Could one have thought up anything more childish? I determined it was simply too infantile to take part in.

Mr. Searl and Dean were talking about all those "swings" and things. They were discussing how far one could jump, and Dean said he 'd done a hundred, though I did n't know whether he meant inches or feet or yards, or how one measured it. They had chosen an abominably steep hill to put their platform on. That was the point, it seemed, because, when one came down, one ought to land on a slope that would give the least shock. I don't know how they hoped to minimize the shock of landing if one ever did land. I went to the edge of their platform, and it looked as if one would head straight for the tops of the pines across the valley. One might not reach them, but, at that, the fall would be atrocious. began to think they were lunatics to let Elsie do it, even though she said she had done it before, on the Bernese Oberland, I think.

I

I will say this for Dean; he jumped first. He went back about fifteen yards, and came at it crouching. He straightened up as he whizzed over that platform, and stood out against the sky quite beautifully upright. Then he went down out of sight. Then he came out on the snow below not nearly so far as I had expected, somehow, and he was in a kneeling position. He came around with a wide sweep.

Like coasting, half of the thing is in getting back, but he went round the side, where the slope was gradual, and was with us again in a comparatively short time. He really had done it very

well. My heart was actually almost warming to him when he looked at me and shook his head.

"Better not ever try it," he said. "You could n't make it."

Probably he did n't think how it sounded. But my spirit is proud and sensitive. Just then he showed Elsie's father a point or two, and the great financier launched himself in space, with his arms out like wings. He went down out of sight, but he also reappeared below, though in a somewhat more tangled condition than Dean. Still, he had n't fallen. Then they argued and reargued about Elsie's trying it, and Dean began to talk volubly about the "sats." That seems to be the Norwegian expression for the take-off. If you "sats" too soon, you-oh, I suppose you break your neck; but the danger of doing that is slight. You 're going so fast. If you "sats" too late, it spoils the length of your jump. But that did n't agonize me. I was sure I could "sats." You must leap erect like a jack-in-the-box at the take-off. You must n't cross your "shes," but hold them closely together and strictly parallel. Elsie soared and disappeared. I covered my eyes. They should not have let her do it. Miss Knowles agreed with me. But Elsie reappeared, with what Dean declared to be a "perfect stem." She is flowerlike and tall, but I thought the remark audacious.

Then Mr. Searl and Dean, just to show off, of course, jumped, one after the other. Elsie was watching them from below.

"Miss Knowles," I said, "in after years do not think too ill of me. Remember that man is at best an imperfect creature. I bequeath you my eyeglasses, for I am sure I shall not want to see what I am about to attempt." With gentle firmness I put her from I clomb-how poetically expressive that word is when applied to "she"! -I clomb some ten yards, somehow, behind that yawning gulf, and, with a misquoted adjuration to my Maker, crouched low upon the impedimenta of the devil and let go.

me.

Every muscle in me was tense as I shot toward the precipice. I rose off it before I dared to spring up with that