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CHAPTER I.

TWO TRAMPS AND A BEAR.

It was the coldest Saint Valentine's eve that Kentucky had known in
twenty years. In Lloydsborough Valley a thin sprinkling of snow whitened
the meadows, enough to show the footprints of every hungry rabbit that
loped across them; but there were not many such tracks. It was so cold
that the rabbits, for all their thick fur, were glad to run home and
hide. Nobody cared to be out long in such weather, and except now and
then, when an ice-cutter's wagon creaked up from some pond to the
frozen pike, the wintry stillness was unbroken.

On the north side of the little country depot a long row of icicles hung
from the eaves. Even the wind seemed to catch its breath there, and
hurry on with a shiver that reached to the telegraph wires overhead. It
shivered down the long stovepipe, too, inside the waiting-room. The
stove had been kept red-hot all that dull gray afternoon, but the
window-panes were still white with heavy frost-work.

Half an hour before the five o'clock train was due from the city, two
boys came running up the railroad track with their skates in their
hands. They were handsome, sturdy little fellows, so well buttoned up in
their leather leggins and warm reefer overcoats that they scarcely felt
the cold. Their cheeks were red as winter apples, from skating against
the wind, and they were almost breathless after their long run up-hill
to the depot. Racing across the platform, they bumped against the door