He expected every minute to hear his mother's voice.
Then he ran down the yard to the wood shed.

It was so intensely cold that the snow did not yield to his tread, but gave out quick sibilant sounds.

It seemed to him like a whispering multitude called up by his footsteps, and as if his mother must hear.
He knew where Barney's old sled hung in the woodshed, and the woodshed door was unlocked.
Presently a boyish figure fled swiftly out of the Thayer yard with a bobbing sled in his wake.

He expected every minute to hear the door or window open; but he cleared the yard and dashed up the road, and nobody arrested him.
[Illustration: "A boyish figure fled swiftly out of the Thayer yard"] Ephraim knew well the way to the coasting-hill, which was considered the best in the village, although he had never coasted there himself, except twice or thrice, surreptitiously, on another boy's sled, and not once this winter.

He heard no more shouts; the frosty air was very still.