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It was the sound of sleigh bells. Coming down toward them out of the darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant. “Hold down your heads, girls: if it’s anybody that knows us, we’re lost.” But it was not, for a voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly and pleasant, asked if its owner could be of any help to them. As they turned toward him, they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome sealskin cloak, wearing a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by a muffler of the same material, disclosing only a pair of long mustaches, and two keen dark eyes. “It’s a son of old Santa Claus!” whispered Addy. The girls tittered audibly as they tumbled into the sleigh; they had regained their former spirits. “Where shall I take you?” said the stranger quietly. There was a hurried whispering; and then Kate said boldly, “To the Institute.” They drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic building loomed up before them. The stranger reined up suddenly. “You know the way better than I,” he said. “Where do you go in?” “Through the back window,” said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. “I see!” responded their strange driver quietly and, alighting quickly, removed the bells from the horses. “We can drive as near as you please now,” he added by way of explanation. “He certainly is a son of Santa Claus,” whispered Addy. “Hadn’t we better ask after his father?” “Hush!” said Kate decidedly. “He is an angel, I dare say.” She added with a delicious irrelevance, which was, however, perfectly understood by her feminine auditors, “We are looking like three frights.”

Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet from a dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight. There was still some light from the reflected snow; and as he handed his fair companions to the ground, each was conscious of undergoing an intense though respectful scrutiny. He assisted them gravely to open the window, and then discreetly retired to the sleigh until the difficult and somewhat discomposing ingress was made. He then walked to the window. “Thank you and good night!” whispered three voices. A single figure still lingered. The stranger leaned over the window sill. “Will you permit me to light my cigar here? It might attract attention if I struck a match outside.” By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years’ tuition?

The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart, affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of Carry, her neighbor. “HE has come,” she gasped in a thrilling whisper. “Who?” asked Carry sympathetically, who never clearly understood when Kate was in earnest. “Who?–Why, the man who rescued us last night! I saw him drive to the door this moment. Don’t speak; I shall be better in a moment–there!” she said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air.

“What can he want?” asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited. “I don’t know,” said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism. “Possibly to put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his young wife, and warn her against us.”

“He didn’t look old, and he didn’t seem like a married man,” rejoined Addy thoughtfully.