As a finger on the snow alters the course of the toboggin, and a nervous push makes it slue round, scattering the inmates, it is needless to say the tyro in front is admonished to preserve the most absolute immobility.  Then the vehicle receives a shove off the top of the hill, and shoots down the smooth precipice, and the novice, with shut eyes to escape the blinding snow that flies like hailstones about him, listens to the wind whistling behind, and with bated breath—­the first time at any rate—­wishes it were over.

“Captain Du Meresq,” cried Lilla, “come along; I am going to take you down the big jump.”

“Off Niagara, if you like.”

“It is a tidy drop, the first shelf, so please I’d rather steer.  I never trust my neck to any one but myself.”

Bertie craned over.  “Let me go down first, and see what it is like; it will give you an awful shake.”

“Bosh!  I have been down before; sit tight,” said Lilla, adjusting herself.

It was a series of snow terraces, half natural, half artificial.  The ridge they started from was very steep, and jutting out a little way down, yawned over a perpendicular drop to the next ledge, which sloped off again to ever recurring but lesser falls.

Receiving the necessary impetus from above, Bertie and Lilla slithered down at a terrific pace, and shot over the jutting ridge—­a good twenty feet drop.  As they touched the ground, the toboggin ploughed up the snow, recovered without upsetting, and tore on, jumping down the lesser falls the same way, and continuing a considerable distance along the level at the bottom before its impetus was exhausted.

Bertie, blind, breathless, and half-choked with snow, heard a voice behind, jerking in quick grasps—­

“Did you e-ver feel such a de-light-ful—­sensation in your life before?”

“Never,” said he with a profound air of conviction, shaking off the snow like a Newfoundland dog.  “I wonder if I could have steered as well!”

“If you are going to try, you may take some young woman who is tired of her life,” said Lilla.

“I’ll take myself down, anyhow,” said Du Meresq, rather nettled; and, having dragged her toboggin up the hill, ran off to get another; but, in passing Cecil, found a moment to say—­

“Don’t let that young lunatic delude you down the jump.  It is unfit for any girl but such a glutton as Lilla.”

“I haven’t the slightest wish to try,” said she, laughing.  “Lilla’s a witch.  Just look at her now.”

Miss Tremaine, standing poised on her toboggin, was in the act of gliding down the hill.  A light pole held in one hand served as a rudder, the other retained the cord reins.

“It is like a fairy in a pantomime let down from above,” ejaculated Du Meresq.  “That is uncommonly tall toboggining!”

A slight commotion was now apparent in the valley below.  A brook ran through it, frozen except is one place, where was a large hole.  Mr. Tremaine and Captain Delamere, slithering down together, ran into a runaway toboggin that had upset its occupant.  This knocked them out of their course, and upset them into the rotten ice of the brook.