"You'll be going to sleep next.
Stay, hold your tongues, all of you--what's that ?" It was the sound of sleigh bells.

Coming down toward them out of the darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant.

"Hold down your heads, girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost." But it was not, for a voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly and pleasant, asked if its owner could be of any help to them.

As they turned toward him, they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome sealskin cloak, wearing a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by a muffler of the same material, disclosing only a pair of long mustaches, and two keen dark eyes.

"It's a son of old Santa Claus!" whispered Addy.