“It’s the snow,” another voice replied, Mr. von Inwald’s.  “I told you it would take two trips.”

“Yes,” Thoburn retorted, breathing in groans.  “Stay up all night to get the blamed stuff here, and then get up at dawn for a cold bath and a twenty-mile walk and an apple for breakfast.  Ugh, my shoulder is dislocated.”

I turned and flew back to Miss Patty and Pierce.  They had stopped in the shelter of the fence corner and Mr. Pierce was on his knees in front of her!  I was so astounded that I forgot for the moment what had brought me.

“Just a second,” he was saying.  “It’s ice on the heel.”

“Please get up off your knees, you’ll take cold.”

“Never had a cold.  I’ll scrape it off with my knife.  Why don’t you wear overshoes?”

“I never have a cold!” she retorted.  “Why, Minnie, is that you?”

“Quick,” I panted.  “Thoburn and Mr. von Inwald coming—­basket—­lantern—­warn the shelter-house!”

“Great Scott!” Mr. Pierce said.  “Here, you girls crawl over the fence:  you’ll be hidden there.  I’ll run back and warn them.”

The lantern was swinging again.  Mr. Thoburn’s grumbling came to us through the snow, monotonous and steady.

“I can’t climb the fence!” Miss Patty said pitifully.  But Mr. Pierce had gone.

I reached my basket through the bars and climbed the fence in a hurry.  Miss Patty had got almost to the top and was standing there on one snow-covered rail, staring across at me through the darkness.

“I can’t, Minnie,” she whispered hopelessly.  “I never could climb a fence, and in this skirt—!”

“Quick!” I said in a low tone.  The lantern was very close.  “Put your leg over.”

She did, and sat there looking down at me like a scared baby.

“Now the other.”

“I—­I can’t!” she whispered.  “If I put them both over I’ll fall.”

“Hurry!”

With a little grunt she put the other foot over, sat a minute with agony in her face and her arms out, then she slid off with a squeal and brought up in a sitting position inside the fence corner.  I dropped beside her.

“What was that noise?” said Mr. Thoburn, almost upon us.  “Something’s moving inside that fence corner.”

“It’s them deers,” Mike’s voice this time.  We could make out the three figures.  “Darned nuisance, them deers is.  They’d have been shot long ago if the spring-house girl hadn’t objected.  She thinks she’s the whole cheese around here.”

“Set it down again,” Mr. von Inwald panted.  We heard the rattle of bottles as they put down the basket, and the next instant Thoburn’s fat hand was resting on the rail of the fence over our heads.  I could feel Miss Patty trembling beside me.

But he didn’t look over.  He stood there resting, breathing hard, and swearing at the weather, while Mike waited, in surly silence, and the von Inwald cursed in German.

After my heart had been beating in my ears for about three years the fat hand moved, and I heard the rattle of glass again and Thoburn’s groan as he bent over his half of the load.