hrough it: had you run
into it at any great speed, you would have fallen; but as yet it was
not hard enough to carry you. I knew that kind of a drift; it is
treacherous. On a later drive one just like it, only built on a vastly
larger scale, was to lead to the first of a series of little accidents
which finally shattered my nerve. That was the only time that my
temerity failed me. I shall tell you about that drive later on.

At the stable I went about my preparations in a leisurely way. I knew
that a supreme test was ahead of myself and the horses, and I meant to
have daylight for tackling it. Once more I went over the most important
bolts; once more I felt and pulled at every strap in the harness. I had
a Clark footwarmer and made sure that it functioned properly I pulled
the flaps of my military fur cap down over neck, ears and cheeks. I
tucked a pillow under the sweater over my chest and made sure that my
leggings clasped my furlined moccasins well. Then, to prevent my coat
from opening even under the stress of motion, just before I got into the
cutter, I tied a rope around my waist.

The hostler brought the horses into the shed. They pawed the floor and
snorted with impatience. While I rolled my robes about my legs and drew
the canvas curtain over the front part of the box, I weighed Dan with my
eyes. I had no fear for Peter, but Dan would have to show to-day that he
deserved the way I had fed and nursed him. Like a chain, the strength
of which is measured by the strength of its weakest link, my team was
measured by Dan's pulling power and endurance. But he looked good to me
as he danced across the pole and threw his head, biting back at Peter
who was teasing him.

The hostler was morose and in a biting mood. Every motion of his seemed
to say, "What is the use of all this? No teamster would go out on a
long drive in this weather, till the snow has settled down; and here a
schoolmaster wants to try it."

At last he pushed the slide doors aside, and we swung out. I held the
horses tight and drove them into that little drift at the bridge to slow
them down right from the start.

The dawn was white, but with a strictly localised angry glow where the
sun was still hidden below the horizon. In a very few minutes he would
be up, and I counted on making that first mile just before he appeared.

This mile is a wide, well levelled road, but ever so often, at intervals
of maybe fifty to sixty yards, steep and long promon