February promised to go out like a thousand lions. Toward noon on the twenty-fourth it began to snow, listlessly, at first, but more thickly as nightfall approached. The next morning the townsfolk awoke to find their homes half buried in a white, downy mass as thick as the height of the fences. It was a morning of fine sport. Old men and young turned out with a will to clean the walks of the city. It was hard work for strong hands manipulating broad wooden shovels, for so deep was the snow that after a few feeble attempts Paddy, the plowman, was forced to give in and urge his plunging horse back to the stable. His plow was useless. The oldest resident experienced such pleasure as had not been his for many years. He reveled in vague recollections of the winter of 1830 when the snow--according to him--had fallen "a mite deeper," and the farmers, living along the main highways, had been compelled to combine their genius and their strength in digging tunnels to the market! That day and the following were clear and crisp. Every one wore green spectacles. Cases of snow-blindness were numerous; and then, toward evening on the twenty-sixth, the mercury, which for thirty-six hours had hovered near the zero-point, began slowly to rise. At midnight a weak, half-hearted rain set in. The next noon, with that mischievousness in which the elements of our zone not infrequently indulge, a strong piercing wind, straight from the north, swept down the state. At seven o'clock that night the common thermometers registered five degrees below zero and a shimmering crust of ice an inch thick lay upon the land. Across the fields and over the fences the farmers drove, in heavy bob-sleds, into town. In the southwest corner of the state a new sect was born whose leaders proclaimed the dawn of the Age of Ice and beseeched the people to look to their souls, before the final congealment of all things. In town a season of gaiety ensued. Numbers of art students proceeded to the open spots upon the campus, and, with hatchets, cut out of the crust gigantic caricatures of well-known instructors. With the zeal and yo-heave-ho of lumber-jacks they raised the figures upright supporting them with props, and the campus became, as if by magic, adorned with profile statues of professors! General as was the interest in the unique entertainment a kind nature had provided, there were certain sophomores who, shunning the spectacle afforded by the decorated campus, sought the seclusion of a certain back-room down-town where they evolved a plan of hazing that promised to be entirely overlooked in the interest otherwise occasioned. Thus far Kerwin had not been molested and had begun to think that at least one banquet was to pass without a recurrence of those adventures which for years had made it notable among the events of the college year.