lling one against the other--and
then a rally, and we emerged in front of a farmyard from which a fairly
fresh trail led south. This trail was filled in, it is true, for the
wind here pitched the snow by the shovelful, but the difference in
colour between the pure white, new snow that filled it and the older
surface to both sides made it sufficiently distinct for the horses to
guide them. They plodded along.

Here miles upon miles of open fields lay to the southeast, and the snow
that fell over all these fields was at once picked up by the wind and
started its irresistible march to the northwest. And no longer did it
crawl. Since it was bound upon a long-distance trip, somewhere in its
career it would be caught in an upward sweep of the wind and thrown
aloft, and then it would hurtle along at the speed of the wind, blotting
everything from sight, hitting hard whatever it encountered, and piling
in wherever it found a sheltered space. The height of this drifting snow
layer varies, of course, directly and jointly (here the teacher makes
fun of his mathematics) as the amount of loose snow available and as the
carrying force of the wind. Many, many years ago I once saved the day
by climbing on to the seat of my cutter and looking around from this
vantage-point. I was lost and had no idea of where I was. There was no
snowstorm going on at the time, but a recent snowfall was being driven
along by a merciless northern gale. As soon as I stood erect on my
seat, my head reached into a less dense drift layer, and I could clearly
discern a farmhouse not more than a few hundred yards away. I had been
on the point of accepting it as a fact that I was lost. Those tactics
would not have done on this particular day, there being the snowstorm to
reckon with. For the moment, not being lost, I was in no need of them,
anyway. But even later the possible but doubtful advantage to be gained
by them seemed more than offset by the great and certain disadvantage of
having to get out of my robes and to expose myself to the chilling wind.

This north-south road was in the future invariably to seem endlessly
long to me. There were no very prominent landmarks--a school
somewhere--and there was hardly any change in the monotony of driving.
As for landmarks, I should mention that there was one more at least.
About two miles from the turn into that town which I have mentioned I
crossed a bridge, and beyond this bridge the trail sloped sharply up
in a