At four o'clock Van Bibber was about as nearly frozen as
a man could be after he had swallowed half a bottle of brandy.
It was so cold that the ice formed on his cigar when he took
it from his lips, and his feet and the dashboard seemed to
have become stuck together.

"I think I'll give it up," he said, finally, as he turned
the horse's head towards Southampton. "I hate to lose three
hundred and fifty dollars as much as any man; but I love my
fair young life, and I'm not going to turn into an equestrian
statue in ice for anybody's collie dog."

He drove the cart to the stable and unharnessed the horse
himself, as all the grooms were out scouring the country, and
then went upstairs unobserved and locked himself in his room,
for he did not care to have the others know that he had given
out so early in the chase. There was a big open fire in his
room, and he put on his warm things and stretched out before
it in a great easy-chair, and smoked and sipped the brandy and
chuckled with delight as he thought of the four other men
racing around in the snow.

"They may have more nerve than I," he soliloquized, "and
I don't say they have not; but they can have all the credit
and rewards they want, and I'll be satisfied to stay just
where I am."

At seven he saw the four riders coming back dejectedly,
and without the dog. As they passed his room he heard one of
the men ask if Van Bibber had got back yet, and another say