1 I guess this sled must be Ned Hale's.
2 Once or twice the sled swerved a little under them.
3 Then he caught Mattie's hand and drew her after him toward the sled.
4 He drew the sled up to the Varnum gate and rested it against the fence.
5 Ethan dragged the sled with one hand and passed the other through Mattie's arm.
6 He took his seat on the sled and Mattie instantly placed herself in front of him.
7 The sled swerved in response, but he righted it again, kept it straight, and drove down on the black projecting mass.
8 He pulled the sled out, blinking like a night-bird as he passed from the shade of the spruces into the transparent dusk of the open.
9 He stretched out his legs, drove his heels into the road to keep the sled from slipping forward, and bent her head back between his hands.
10 She waited while he seated himself with crossed legs in the front of the sled; then she crouched quickly down at his back and clasped her arms about him.
11 As they drew near the end of the village the cries of children reached them, and they saw a knot of boys, with sleds behind them, scattering across the open space before the church.
12 The sled started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk, gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ.
13 They had reached the crest of the Corbury road, and between the indistinct white glimmer of the church and the black curtain of the Varnum spruces the slope stretched away below them without a sled on its length.
14 The pitch of the Corbury road, below lawyer Varnum's spruces, was the favourite coasting-ground of Starkfield, and on clear evenings the church corner rang till late with the shouts of the coasters; but to-night not a sled darkened the whiteness of the long declivity.