“Guess it ain’t quite so fast as yours,” admitted Ezra.  “That’s your brother’s, ain’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that sled can’t be beat in town.  Mine’s ’bout as good as any, ’cept that.  I’ve always heard my brother say that your brother’s sled was the best one he ever see.”

Ephraim stood looking at his brother’s old battered but distinguished sled as if it had been a blood-horse.  “Guess it can’t be beat,” he chuckled.

“No sir, it can’t,” said Ezra.  He started off past Ephraim down the road, with his sled trailing at his heels.

“Hullo!” called Ephraim, “ain’t you goin’ up again?”

“Can’t, got to go home.”

“Less try it jest once more, an’ see if you can’t go further.”

“No, I can’t, nohow.  Mother won’t like it as ’tis.”

“Whip you?”

“’Spect so; don’t mind it if she does.”  Ezra brought a great show of courage to balance the other’s immunity from danger.  “Don’t mind nothin’ ’bout a little whippin’,” he added, with a brave and contemptuous air.  He whistled as he went on.

Ephraim stood watching him.  He had enough brave blood in his veins to feel that this contempt of a whipping was a greater thing than not being whipped.  He felt an envious admiration of Ezra Ray, but that did not prevent his calling after him: 

“Ezra!”

“What say?”

“You ain’t goin’ to tell my mother?”

“Didn’t I say I wasn’t?  I don’t tell fibs.  Hope to die if I do.”

Ezra’s brave whistle, as cheerfully defiant of his mother’s prospective wrath as the note of a bugler advancing to the charge, died away in the distance.  For Ephraim now began the one unrestrained hilarity of his whole life.  All by himself in the white moonlight and the keen night air he climbed the long hill, and slid down over and over.  He ignored his feeble and laboring breath of life.  He trod upon, he outspeeded all infirmities of the flesh in his wild triumph of the spirit.  He shouted and hallooed as he shot down the hill.  His mother could not have recognized his voice had she heard it, for it was the first time that the boy had ever given full cry to the natural voice of youth and his heart.  A few stolen races, and sorties up apple-trees, a few stolen slides had poor Ephraim Thayer had; they had been snatched in odd minutes, at the imminent danger of discovery; but now he had the wide night before him; he had broken over all his trammels, and he was free.

Up and down the hill went Ephraim Thayer, having the one playtime of his life, speeding on his brother’s famous sled against bondage and deprivation and death.  It was after midnight when he went home; all the village lights were out; the white road stretched before him, as still and deserted as a road through solitude itself.  Ephraim had never been out-of-doors so late before, he had never been so alone in his life, but he was not afraid.  He was not afraid of anything in the lonely night, and he was not afraid of his mother at home.  He thought to himself exultantly that Ezra Ray had been no more courageous than he, although, to be sure, he had not a whipping to fear like Ezra.  His heart was full of joyful triumph that he was not wholly guilty, since it was the outcome of an innocent desire.