“Bully coast!” exclaimed Bob with satisfaction, swinging the bodsled into position.  “All ready, Betsey?”

“Just a minute,” begged Betty, with a delightful little shiver of excitement as she tucked in her skirts and pulled her soft hat further over her eyes.  “Ye-s, now I guess I’m fixed.”

They started.  The wind sang in their ears and sharp particles of snow flew up to sting their faces.  Zip! they had taken one hill, and the gallant bobsled gathered momentum.  Betty clung tightly to Bob.

“All right?” he shouted, without turning his head.

“It’s fine!” shrieked Betty.  “It takes my breath away, but I love it!”

The bobsled seemed fairly to leap the series of gentle slopes that lay at the foot of the long hill, and for every rise Betty and Bob received a bump that would have jarred the bones of less enthusiastic sportsmen.  Then, suddenly, they were in the hollow, and the next thing they knew Betty lay breathless in a soft snow bank and Bob found himself flat on his back a few feet away.  The sled had overturned with them.

“Betty! are you hurt?” cried Bob, scrambling to his feet.  “Here, don’t struggle!  I’ll have you out in a jiffy.”

He pulled her from the bank of snow and helped her shake her garments free from the white flakes.

“I’m not hurt a bit, not even scratched,” she assured him.  “Wasn’t that a spill, though?  The first thing I knew I was sailing through space, and I’m thankful I landed in soft snow.  Where’s the sled?  Oh, over there!”

“Want to quit?” asked Bob, as she began to help him right the overturned sled.  “We can walk over to where we left your sled, you know, Betty.”

“And miss the coast?” said Betty scornfully.  “Well, not much, Bob Henderson.  It takes more than one upset to make me give up coasting.”

She seated herself behind Bob again, and with a touch of his foot they began the descent of the second hill.  The snow had melted more here, and in some spots the covering was very thin.  Bob found the task of steering really difficult.

“I don’t think much of this,” he began to say, but at the second word the bobsled struck a huge root, the riders were pitched forward, and for one desperate moment they clung to the scrubby undergrowth that bordered what they supposed was the side of the road.

Then their hold loosened and they fell.

Slipping, sliding, tumbling, rolling, a confused sound of Bob’s shouts in her ears, Betty closed her eyes and only opened them when she found that she was stationary again.  She had no idea of where she was, nor of how far she had fallen.

“Bob?” she called timidly at first, and then in terror.  “Bob!”

“Look behind you,” said Bob’s familiar voice.

Betty turned her head, and there was Bob, grinning at her placidly.  His cap was gone and several buttons were ripped bodily from his mackinaw, but he did not seem to be injured and when he pulled Betty to her feet, that young person found that she, too, was unhurt.