Up, up it went, its peak narrowing to a needle point. Above it the Equator, unused to the cold, shriveled and shrank. Now he was the size of a hoop, now of a doughnut, presently he was scarcely larger than a ring. “Slide!” shouted a familiar voice behind Billy. “Slide, Evening Star, slide for your life!” The Evening Star heard the voice, and she, as well as Billy, recognized it as the voice of Nimbus. “The snow mountain is the North Pole!” cried Nimbus. “I just asked an Eskimo where it was and he pointed it out. I came just in time, didn’t I?” The last question was addressed to the Evening Star, who had followed his advice and slid right into his arms. “I jumped the gully,” said Nimbus, pointing to the abyss. “There wasn’t time to come over the bridge. And now I think we’ve got the Equator where we want him.” “Where do you want me?” snarled the Equator. “Over this Pole,” said Nimbus, and as he spoke he slid up the North Pole as a sailor slides down a rope, grasped the Equator and impaled him upon it. He rolled him down and down until Jack Frost could reach him and help hold him, and the Equator, feeling himself stretched like an elastic over the conical snow peak, saw that he was doomed to be rolled back around the earth and resume his post of duty in the center. “I won’t do it,” he protested. “I’ll never do it!” He struggled and twisted in his efforts to escape, but Nimbus held him fast, and Jack Frost kept him small by the clutch of his icy fingers. Billy danced up and down in his excitement, for once the Equator almost got away. “Go on down! Go on down!” shouted Billy. “My mother says you are only an imaginary line, anyway!” * * * * * “Why, Billy,” said his mother, “look at the way you have eaten up your poor North Pole!” And at the sound of his mother’s voice Nimbus put a sunbeam into Billy’s mouth which tasted just like lemon candy. The clang of the enchanted trolley car sounded in his ears as the whole lot of his new friends stepped aboard and vanished from his sight. He looked around. But, instead of Nimbus and the Evening Star and Jack Frost and the Equator, he found his mother smiling down at him as he lay under the lilac bush, and the conductor was just ringing the bell for the trolley car to stop at the corner. THE END TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. The illustrations listed on pages 28, 32, 48, and 78 in the List of Illustrations do not exist in the original text. Alternate or archaic spelling has been retained from the original. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Runaway Equator, by Lilian Bell