However, when he reached the top of the hill there was another boy with his sled.  He had been all ready to coast down, but had seen Ephraim coming, and waited.

“Hullo!” he called.

“Hullo!” returned Ephraim, panting.

Then the boy stared.  “It ain’t you, Ephraim Thayer!” he demanded.

“Why ain’t it me?” returned Ephraim, with a manful air, swaggering back his shoulders at the other boy, who was Ezra Ray.

“Why, I didn’t know your mother ever let you out,” said Ezra, in a bewildered fashion.  In fact, the vision of Ephraim Thayer out with a sled, coasting, at eleven o’clock at night, was startling.  Ezra remembered dazedly how he had heard his mother say that very afternoon that Ephraim was worse, that the doctor had been there last Saturday, and she didn’t believe he would live long.  He looked at Ephraim standing there in the moonlight almost as if he were a spirit.

“She ain’t let me for some time; I’ve been sick,” admitted Ephraim, yet with defiance.

“I heard you was awful sick,” said Ezra.

“I was; but the doctor give me some medicine that cured me.”

Ephraim placed his sled in position and got on stiffly.  The other boy still watched.  “She know you’re out to-night?” he inquired, abruptly.

Ephraim looked up at him.  “S’pose you think you’ll go an’ tell her, if she don’t,” said he.

“No, I won’t, honest.”

“Hope to die if you do?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I run out of the side door.”

“Both on ’em asleep?”

Ephraim nodded.

Ezra Ray whistled.  “You’ll get a whippin’ when your mother finds it out.”

“No, I sha’n’t.  Mother can’t whip me, because the doctor says it ain’t good for me.  You goin’ down?”

“Can’t go down but once.  I’ve got to go home, or mother ’ll give it to me.”

“Does she ever whip you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Mine don’t,” said Ephraim, and he felt a superiority over Ezra Ray.  He thought, too, that his sled was a better one.  It was not painted, nor was it as new as Ezra’s, but it had a reputation.  Barney had won many coasting laurels with it in his boyhood, and his little brother, who had never used it himself, had always looked upon it with unbounded faith and admiration.

He gathered up his sled-rope, spurred himself into a start with his heels, and went swiftly down the long hill, gathering speed as he went.  Poor Ephraim had an instinct for steering; he did not swerve from the track.  The frosty wind smote his face, his breath nearly failed him, but half-way down he gave a triumphant whoop.  When he reached the foot of the hill he had barely wind enough to get off his sled and drag it to one side, for Ezra Ray was coming down.

Ezra did not slide as far as Ephraim had done.  Ephraim watched anxiously lest he should.  “That sled of yours ain’t no good,” he panted, when Ezra had stopped several yards from where he stood.