“Don’t you go no further, sir; you stop here,” said the man, who seemed to know me, though I did not know him. “It would take a male helephant to get to Sunbury to-night There’s been no such snow for six and forty year; old Jim the ostler can call it to mind; and then it was over the roof, he saith. You look uncommon queer already, seem to be standing on your head a’most. Why, bless me, you be drinking from the empty glass!” But I found the right glass with his help, and swallowed the hot brown draught without knowing it. Then I asked him the time, and he said, “Nigh on ten o’clock. You take my advice, and have a bed here. Well, wilful will, and woeful won’t, when it’s too late to mend it.” He cast this at me as I said “Good night,” and without sitting down, staggered out again. I believe that even now I should have reached home safely, not having so very much further to go, if the roads had been wide and straight as they were thus far. But two things were very much against me now, and both of them made a great difference. I had turned from the main road into twisting narrow lanes, and my course was across the wind instead of right before it. Without that strong wind at my back I could scarcely have reached Hanworth by that time, though it seemed a very long time to take from Notting Hill, compared with the usual rate of walking. But now the fierce wind was on my left side quite as often as behind me, and it drove me from my line, as I grew more feeble, and knocked my weary legs into one another. Moreover, it seemed to go through me twice as much, and to rattle me like splinter shaken up, and to drive the spikes of snow to my heart almost. If I had walked as in a dream before, I was moving as in a deep sleep now. I had some sort of sense of going on for ever, as a man has a knowledge of his own snoring; and I have some weak remembrance of beating with my hands—for my stick must have gone away long ago—to keep off a blanket that was smothering me. Then I seemed to be lifted, and set down somewhere, and it did not matter where it was. And what happened after that was not to me, but to people who told me of it afterwards.