TED and Hubert were proud of the commission and felt that much depended on them. Ted led the way, not merely because he was past fourteen and more than half a year older than his cousin, but because Hubert unconsciously yielded to the captaincy of a more venturesome and resolute spirit. Everything was ready for Christmas at home—mince pies, fruit cake, a fat turkey hanging out in the cold—and no doubt the as yet mysteriously reserved presents would be plentiful and satisfactory. Only a tree was still needed, and Ted and Hubert were to get it.

So now, in the early afternoon of December 24, 1917, they tramped up the long hill at the back of the Ridgway farm toward North Carolina woods of evergreens and leafless maples. The landscape as far as the eye went was white with snow, but its depth, except in drifts, was only about two inches. Ted dragged a sled with rope wherewith to strap the tree thereon. Hubert trudged beside him—always a little behind—carrying a heavy sharp hatchet.

"Aunt Mary said we must get a good one, small size, and I'm going to hunt till we do," said Ted.

"Papa says it isn't everybody who'll have all we'll have this Christmas," remarked Hubert. "He says it's great to have a farm as well as a town house and perduce your own food in war time."

"'Produce'—not 'perduce,'" corrected Ted.

About two-thirds of the way up the long white stretch of hillside the boys paused on the brink of a pit that had been dug years before by a thick-witted settler in a hopeless quest for the gold that was then profitably mined some ten miles away. The pit was about twenty-five feet deep at its middle and perhaps thirty-five in diameter—an excavation at once too large and too small to pay for the great labor of filling in. So it had been left as it was. The snows of the windy hillside had drifted into it until the bottom was deeply covered.

The boys paused only to take a look into the "big hole" and then went on their way up the remaining stretch of open hillside. They explored the woods for a quarter of a mile or more before they found just the sort of slenderly tapering and gracefully branching spruce that they wanted. In no great while this was cut down, the spreading branches were roped in, and the trunk tied on the sled, which was then dragged out into the open.

The long descent toward the distant farm-house was gradual enough to render sledding safe yet steep enough at points to make dragging burdensome. Ted declared that the easiest way to get down with their load was to slide down, and Hubert agreed.

"But we'd better look out for the pit," added Hubert.

"Oh, we'll aim so as to leave that away to one side," said Ted confidently.

And so they did. After a running start, Ted leaped on the sled, straddling the trunk of the Christmas tree, and Hubert flung himself with a shout into the trailing branches, upon which he secured a firm hold.

Away they went, shouting happily, now quite forgetting the pit in their excitement. They only laughed when they bumped into a snow-covered obstruction and were swerved to the left of their intended course. They laughed again when another bump carried them still further to the left. A third mishap of the same kind awoke Ted to the danger, but too late.

He had hardly begun to kick his heels into the snowy surface whirling past, in an effort to change their course, and to shout, "Look out!" in great alarm, when Hubert, whose view was obstructed by the branches of the spruce, became aware of a sudden silence and felt himself sinking through space. The younger boy scarcely realized that they had gone over the brink of the pit until he found himself floundering at the bottom in the snow, which happily was deep enough to break the force of their fall and save them from injury.

As soon as he found that neither Hubert nor himself had been harmed, Ted laughed over their struggles in snow up to their waists, but Hubert thought it was no laughing matter and accusingly inquired why they had done such a foolish thing.

"We certainly were fools to try it," admitted Ted, sobering.

He floundered up to a higher level of the pit's bottom where the snow was only about two feet deep, extended a hand to Hubert, and then pulled the tree-laden sled after them.

"Now, how are we going to get out?" he asked excitedly.

"We can't get out," said Hubert, looking around at the pit's steep sides.

"But we must, Hu. Anyhow, somebody's sure to come along."

But nobody did. They shouted again and again, as time passed, and listened in vain for an answer. Meanwhile Ted tried every means of escape he could think of. He first proposed to cut steps into the side of the pit, but the hatchet could not be found. Hubert had either lost his grip on it as they were sledding down the hill or it was now somewhere under the deep snow in the bottom of the pit.

Ted next proposed to throw the rope around a sapling that hung over the very brink some fifteen feet above their heads. He therefore unstrapped the Christmas tree from the sled, coiled half the rope, and attempted to throw it over the sapling. Several times he succeeded in throwing the coil as high as the top of the pit, but always failed to throw it around the little tree.

"Oh, it's no use," groaned Hubert at last. "We'll never get out."

"Now, Hu, you mustn't give up," urged Ted. "Boy Scouts don't give up. We'll get out somehow. Think of the good times coming when we visit Camp Hancock and go hunting with Uncle Walter in the Okefinokee."

"But we'll have to stay here till tomorrow and we'll freeze to death. I'm nearly frozen now."

"Now, Hu, you quit that," rebuked Ted, although profoundly discouraged himself. "Jump up and down and swing your arms if you're cold, but don't do the baby act. Think of the soldiers in the trenches and what they have to stand. Our own American boys are in the trenches now, and do you think one of them would whimper because it was cold or wet, or even if a bomb dropped in on them?"

"But they can get out and we can't," tearfully argued Hubert.

"Yes!—they can go 'over the top' and charge the enemy and meet cannon balls and liquid fire and poison gas and—— Oh, Hu, this is nothing! Can't we be soldiers enough to stand just a hole in the ground with snow in it?"

Hubert had his doubts, but he was silenced. He exercised his numb limbs, as advised, and watched Ted as he prepared to make experiment of still another plan. With his pocket-knife Ted picked stones out of the side of the pit until he found one he thought might serve his purpose—an oblong, jagged bit of rock around which the rope could be securely tied. Again and again Ted threw this stone—the rope trailing after it—without succeeding in sending it around the sapling.

The sun had set and Hubert's teeth chattered as he wept, when, almost ready to give up, it occurred to Ted to toss the stone up with both hands and all his strength, aiming half a foot to the right of the leaning sapling. This carried the stone higher than it had gone before and, at the second trial, it struck the incline above the tree, rolled and came down on the other side, carrying the rope around the trunk and bringing it within reach of Ted's hand, who drew it down and quickly tied the two ends together.

Within five minutes the boy had clambered out of the pit. Then Hubert began his struggle to follow, but Ted stopped him, insisting that both the sled and the Christmas tree be drawn out first. This having been accomplished with considerable difficulty, Hubert, with the rope tied round his waist, was assisted to the upper level after much effort and some strain on the part of both boys.

"I'll never slide down that hill again," vowed Hubert, as they neared the cheeringly lighted farm-house, dragging sled and tree.

But Ted only said:

"I'm glad we got out without help. I'm glad we fell in, too, because it was a little bit like being soldiers in the trenches."

Hubert Ridgway was the petted son of the house they were entering, while Theodore Carroll was but a semi-adopted orphan cousin who, though well cared for, had known no pampering. This accounted in part for the latter's greater energy and self-reliance, but perhaps there was something in this lean, dark, keen-eyed handsome boy from inheritance that the fair-haired, plump, ease-loving Hubert lacked. Ted knew little about his parents, and rarely asked questions because he observed a slight note of disapproval when his aunt and his uncles answered, but he had heard more than once that his father was "a poet who nearly died in the poor-house" and that his mother was "high-strung and artistic"—whatever that might mean. His parents had missed life's material prizes and come to early death, but they had lived intensely; and the son of their blood, alert, eager, fully alive in both body and brain, was likewise inclined to look beyond the mere pleasures of the senses toward the higher and more truly substantial values.

The difference between the two boys was indicated not only in their mishap of the afternoon but as they sat and talked in the warm, comfortable sitting-room after supper. Hubert could not spare a thought for anything but the coming Christmas presents which he hoped were many and varied, including heaps of good things to eat. Ted was happily expectant also, but he thought and spoke much more about the promised visit to Camp Hancock and the hunting trip to follow in the Okefinokee Swamp.

Ted usually spent part of the year with his uncle in North Carolina and the other part with his uncle in southern Georgia, attending school in both States. He knew that his Georgia uncle, who was his favorite, wanted him all the time, and he preferred the easy-going life on the big farm near the borders of the Okefinokee; but he traveled back and forth because his North Carolina uncle, though really indifferent, made a virtue of insisting on the arrangement entered into when the widow Carroll promptly followed her poet-husband to another world and her brothers recognized their duty to look after her son. This winter the Georgia uncle had invited both boys, proposing to take them on a hunting trip in the great swamp, and—to the delight of Ted—it was arranged for them to stop at Augusta and visit Camp Hancock on their way down.

"I can't wait till I see my Christmas presents," said Hubert as they were going to bed.

"I can hardly wait till I see Camp Hancock and thousands of soldiers," said Ted. "Camp Hancock and the Okefinokee are my two great Christmas presents."

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