Even as he worked, the last vestige of daylight faded and the atmosphere around him became a vast area of rushing, stinging, impenetrable gray. But one hope remained. The horses, if left to themselves, might face the blizzard and take him home. He knew it was not more than a mile and a half or two miles at the most. It was only a chance, but at any rate there was no alternative. In a few minutes the game would be played, and won or lost. Climbing into the sled, he sacrificed the last chance of life, should the team fail him, by taking off his sheepskin-lined overcoat and wrapping it around the unconscious man below. Grasping the lines, he swung the free ends across the hips of his team with all the force the wind allowed him. They wrenched the front runners around and headed into the wind. Again the lines cut into the air, and the horses broke into a trot. Once more came the stinging whistle of leather, and they broke into a run. The wind seared Grahame’s flesh like hot iron, and he threw one arm before his face. Realizing the futility of trying to guide his horses over a road he could not see, he dropped the lines to the bottom of the box and pinned them with his feet. Time and again the horses floundered into deep snow and Grahame’s hopes sank to zero, only to come up again as he felt the sled again lunge forward on the hard-packed road. Gaining confidence as the minutes passed, he leaned forward and talked to the team as a mother croons to her child. Then he begged and cursed and cheered them by turns. In his excitement he forgot the wind and the snow and the pain--forgot even the menace of death itself. A thought flashed before his mind of the book he had been reading only the night before. What in hell did Ben Hur know about the real article? Here was a race against the forces of nature when life itself was the stake. He laughed aloud, and with the laugh came a lurch to one side, a crash and the wild scream of broken wire, and splinters of a gate-post flew in his face. The sled slowed down on bare ground, only to lunge forward toward a black shadow ahead. An instant later he caught a fleeting vision of an orange glow, outlining the figure of a woman. * * * * * Some fifteen years before and far to the south and east, Fred Kinear had grown to early manhood. From one of the parental strains, he had inherited length, breadth and a certain degree of thickness--not the thickness of surplus flesh, but rather the depth of chest and shoulder to which nature anchors the muscles of strong men. Another strain, perhaps, had endowed him with a sunny disposition and the ability to make friends and to hold fast to those he made. Socially he was a success, because like most really strong men to whom the Creator has given a level head as well, he regarded his muscular power as a trust and drew from it the supreme confidence in himself that automatically lifts men of his type above the bully class.