The moon was bright that night.  The snow was frozen hard.  The long hills where the boys coasted looked like slopes of silver.  Ephraim had to go to bed at eight.  He lay, well propped up on pillows, in his little bedroom, and he could hear the shouts of the coasting boys.  Now that he could breathe more easily the superiority of his enforced deprivation of such joys no longer comforted him as much as it had done.  His curtain was up, and the moonlight lay on his bed.  The mystic influence of that strange white orb which moves the soul of the lover to dream of love and yearnings after it, which saddens with sweet wounds the soul who has lost it forever, which increases the terrible freedom of the maniac, and perhaps moves the tides, apparently increased the longing in the heart of one poor boy for all the innocent hilarity of his youth which he had missed.

Ephraim lay there in the moonlight, and longed as he had never longed before to go forth and run and play and halloo, to career down those wonderful shining slants of snow, to be free and equal with those other boys, whose hearts told off their healthy lives after the Creator’s plan.

The clock in the kitchen struck nine, then ten.  Caleb and Deborah went to bed, and Ephraim could hear his father’s snores and his mother’s heavy breathing from a distant room.  Ephraim could not go to sleep.  He lay there and longed for the frosty night air, the sled, and the swift flight down the white hill as never lover longed for his mistress.

At half-past ten o’clock Ephraim rose up.  He dressed himself in the moonlight—­all except his shoes; those he carried in his hand—­and stole out in his stocking-feet to the entryway, where his warm coat and cap, which he so seldom wore, hung.  Ephraim pulled the cap over his ears, put on the coat, cautiously unbolted the door, and stepped forth like a captive from prison.

He sat down on the doorstep and put on his shoes, tying them with trembling, fumbling fingers.  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.  He thought to himself that the other boys had gone home, but he did not care.