"No, I ain't goin' to get out again, Norm," he said querulously. "I've had enough of this fool's errand. I'm froze solid now in one position, and I'm gittin' used to it. I don't want to climb out and limber up, and then have to freeze stiff all over again in some new shape. Just you give it up for a bad job, and come along. We can get to Octavius by supper-time if we look sharp." "I never got beat like this before!" growled Norman Hazzard, kicking into the crust. "I hate to give up a thing this way. But," he added after a pause, "I s'pose you're right. It is a fool's errand, and I guess we're the fools, sure enough." With a reluctant sigh he knocked the snow off his boots against the runner, as he was about to step into the sleigh. He seated himself beside Moak, and drew the buffalo-robe up over his breast, and said, "All right, go ahead!" Moak grinned, in spite of his ill-temper. "I didn't think it'd be as bad as that, Norm," he chuckled, "drivin' you clean out of your senses. Why, man, you're goin' away without your overcoat!" "No. You mind your own business, Moak!" rejoined the deputy marshal, getting one of his shoulders under the robe. "Shall I run in and get it for you?" suggested Job, half-turning to hasten on the errand. "You mind _your_ business, too!" said Hazzard, with affected roughness, but with an undertone of humane meaning which both his hearers caught and comprehended. "And look here, boy, if you and the old man find yourselves in need of help, why, you know where I'm to be found. Meanwhile you'd better take this." He handed something to Job. Mr. Moak cast a look of hostile suspicion at the urchin by the roadside. "Guess he's more likely to know where Mose Whipple's to be found!" Moak said. Then he drew the reins tight with a jerk, gave a loud, emphatic cluck to the horse, and the sleigh went dashing southward amid a defiant jingling of bells. The boy stood watching till the vehicle had become a mere dwindling point of blackness on the sunlit waste of snow. Then he turned his attention to the greenback which the deputy marshal had given him, and looked meditatively at the big and significant "5" on its right-hand corner. When he lifted his eyes again the sleigh had disappeared. The pursuit of poor Mose was at an end. When the spring of 1864 came slowly up on the bleak tablelands skirting the Adirondacks, it found the Whipple homestead undoubtedly better off than it had been a year before. Neighbors from Juno Mills who drove by, after the road had settled into usable condition, noticed that the place had been "spruced up," and looked considerably more shipshape than it had ever done in Mose's time. There was even a report down at the Corners that old Asa was going to borrow Taft's two-horse cultivator and put in some crops!