"Aunt Rose," exclaimed Tom Gray, several mornings after the Christmas dance, "I have a scheme; but, before I ask your permission to carry it out, I want you to grant it."

"Why do you ask it at all, then, Tom, dear?" answered his aunt.

"Because we want your seal and sanction upon the undertaking," replied Tom, giving the old lady an affectionate squeeze. "Is it granted, little Lady Gray?" he asked.

"I am merely groping about in the dark, my boy, but I trust to your good sense not to ask me anything too outrageous. Tell me what it is quickly, so that I may know exactly how deeply I am implicated."

"Well," said Tom, "here's the scheme in a nutshell. I want to give a picnic."

Mrs. Gray groaned.

"A picnic, boy? Whoever heard of a picnic in mid-winter. What mad notion is this?"

"But you have given your consent, aunty, and no honorable woman can go back on her word."

"So I have, child, but explain to me quickly what a winter picnic is so that I may know the worst at once."

"A winter picnic is a glorious tramp in the woods, with a big camp-fire at noon, for food, warmth and rest, and then a tramp back again."

"And can I trust to you to take good care of my four girls? Anne and Jessica are not giants for strength. You must not walk them too far, or let them get chilled; and, if you find they are growing tired, you must bring them straight back."

"On my word of honor, as a gentleman and a Gray, I promise," said Tom, solemnly.

"And you will all be in before dark?" continued Mrs. Gray.

"We promise," continued the young people.

"Wear your stoutest shoes and warmest clothing," she went on.

"We promise," they cried.

"And we want a lot of lunch, aunt," said Tom coaxingly, "and some nice raw bacon for cooking and eating purposes."

"You shall have everything you want," said Mrs. Gray, "but who will carry the lunch?"

"We will distribute it on the backs of our four pack mules," replied Grace. "But Hippy must carry the coffee-pot. He's not to be trusted with food."

"Now, wouldn't it be a remarkable sight to see a pack mule eating off his own back!" observed Hippy. "There are several animals that can turn their heads all the way around, I believe, but not the human animal."

"We had better start as soon as possible," broke in Tom. "Hurry up, girls, and get ready, while the servants fix the lunch."

In half an hour eight young people, well muffled and mittened, started off toward the open country. It was a clear, cold day and the snow-covered fields and meadows sparkled in the sunshine.

"If I were a gypsy by birth, as well as by inclination," declared Tom, as they trudged gayly along, "I should take to the road in the early spring, and never see a roof again until cold weather."

"But being a member of a respectable family and about to enter college, you have to sleep in a bed under cover?" added David.

"It's partly that," said Tom, "and partly the cold weather that is responsible for my good behavior two thirds of the year. If I lived in a warm climate all the year around, every respectable notion I had would melt away in a week and I'd take to the open forever."

"I have never been in the woods in the winter time," said Anne. "Are they very beautiful?"

"One of the finest sights in the world," cried Tom enthusiastically, his wholesome face glowing from his exercise.

Just then they climbed an old stone wall and entered a forest known as "Upton Wood," which covered an area of ten miles or more in length and several miles across.

"It is beautiful," said Anne as she gazed up and down the wooded aisles carpeted in white. "It is like a great cathedral. I could almost kneel and pray at one of these snow covered stumps. They are like altars."

"The fault I find with the woods in winter," observed Grace, "is that there is nothing to do in them, no birds and beasts to make things lively, no flowers to pick, no brooks to wade in. Just an everlasting stillness."

"I admit there's not much social life," replied Tom. "The inhabitants either go to sleep or fly south, most of them. But don't forget the rabbits and squirrels and——"

"And an occasional bear," interrupted Reddy. "They have been seen in these parts."

"Worse than bears," said Hippy. "Wolves!"

"Goodness!" ejaculated Tom. "You are doing pretty well. I didn't know this country was so wild. But that's going some."

"Oh, well, as to that," said David, "nobody has ever really seen anything worse than wildcats, and we have to take old Jean's word for it about the wolves. He claimed to have seen wolves in these woods three years ago. As a matter of fact they chased him out, and he was obliged to turn civilized for three months."

"Who is old Jean?" asked Tom, much interested.

"He is a French-Canadian hunter who has lived somewhere in this forest for years. He comes into town occasionally, looking like Daniel Boone, dressed in skins with a squirrel cap, and carrying a bunch of rabbits that he sells to the butchers."

"He's a great sight," said Grace. "I saw him on his snowshoes one day. He was coming down Upton Hill, where we coasted, you know, Anne, and he sped along the fields faster than David's motor cycle."

They had been walking for some time over the hard-packed snow and were now well into the forest, which hemmed them in on every side and seemed to stretch out in all directions into infinite space.

"Reddy, are you perfectly sure we won't get lost in this place?" demanded Jessica at last.

They had been walking along silently intent on their own thoughts. Perhaps it was the grandeur of the great snow-laden trees that oppressed them; perhaps the vast loneliness of the place, where nothing was stirring, not even a rabbit.

"We're all right," returned Reddy. "My compass tells me. We go due north till we want to start home and then we can either turn around and go back due south or turn west and go home by the road."

"I have neither compass nor watch," said Hippy, "but nature's timepiece tells me that it's lunch time. This cold air gives me an appetite."

"Gives you one?" cried David. "You old anaconda, you were born with an appetite. You started eating boiled dumplings when you were two years old."

"Who told you so?" demanded Hippy.

"Never mind," said David. "It's an old story in Oakdale."

"Let's feed the poor soul," interposed Grace. "It would be wanton cruelty to keep him waiting any longer."

"He'll have to make the fire, then," said Reddy. "Make him pay for his dumplings if he wants 'em so early."

"All right, Carrots," cried Hippy. "I'll gather fagots and make a fire, just to keep you from talking so much."

"I'll help you, Hippy," said Nora. "I'm not ashamed to admit that I am very hungry too. It's the people who are never able to eat at the table, and then go off and feed up in the pantry, who always manage to shirk their work."

The others all laughed.

"Let's make a fair division of labor," put in Grace, "so as to prevent future talk."

While some of them gathered sticks and dried branches, the others began clearing away the snow in an open space, where the fire could be built.

Anne and Jessica unpacked the luncheon and poured some coffee from a glass jar into a tin pot to be heated, while Tom peeled several long switches and impaled pieces of bacon on the ends to be cooked over the fire, which was soon blazing comfortably.

"How do you like this, girls?" he asked presently, when the broiling bacon began to give out an appetizing smell and the hot coffee added its fragrance to the air. "How's this for a winter picnic?"

"I like it better than a summer picnic," interposed Hippy. "The food is better and there are no gnats."

"Gnats are very fond of fat people," said Reddy. "They drink down their blood like—circus lemonade."

"Get busy and give me some coffee, Red-head," said Hippy, who sat on a stump and ate energetically, while the others were broiling their slices of bacon.

"Here, Hippy," said Nora, pouring out a steaming cupful, "if it wasn't interesting to watch you store it away, perhaps I wouldn't wait on you hand and foot like this."

"This is the best way in the world to cook bacon," said Tom, holding his wand over the fire with several pieces of bacon stuck on the forked ends.

"A very good method, if your stick doesn't burn up," replied Anne. "There! Mine fell into the fire. I knew it would."

Meantime, Jessica and Grace were frying the rest of the slices in a pan.

"That's good enough, but this is better and quicker," said Grace. "There's no reason for dispensing with all the comforts of a home just because you choose to be a woodsman, Tom."

They never forget how they enjoyed that luncheon, devouring everything to the ultimate crumb and the final drop of hot coffee.

Although it was bitterly cold, they did not feel the chill. The brisk walk, the warm fire and their hearty meal had quickened their blood, and even Anne, the smallest and most delicate of them all, felt something of Tom's enthusiasm for the deep woods.

At last it was time to start again.

The boys were trampling down the fire while the girls began stowing the cups and coffee-pot into a basket. The woods seemed suddenly to have grown very quiet.

"How still it is," whispered Anne. "I feel as if everything in the world had stopped. There is not a breath stirring."

"Perhaps it has," answered Grace. "But we mustn't stop, even if everything else has, now that the fire is out, or we'll freeze to death."

She was just about to call the others briskly, for the air was beginning to nip her cheeks, when something in the faces of the four boys made her pause.

They were standing together near the remains of the fire, and seemed to be listening intently.

Not a sound, not even the crackling of a branch disturbed the stillness for a moment and then, from what appeared to be a great distance, came a long, howling wail, so forlorn, so weird, it might have been the cry of a spirit.

"What is it?" whispered the other girls, creeping about Grace.

"I think we'd better be hurrying along, now, girls," said David in a natural voice. "It's getting late."

"You can't deceive us, David," replied Grace calmly. "We know it's wolves."