Hope to die if I do." Ezra's brave whistle, as cheerfully defiant of his mother's prospective wrath as the note of a bugler advancing to the charge, died away in the distance.

For Ephraim now began the one unrestrained hilarity of his whole life.

All by himself in the white moonlight and the keen night air he climbed the long hill, and slid down over and over.

He ignored his feeble and laboring breath of life.

He trod upon, he outspeeded all infirmities of the flesh in his wild triumph of the spirit.