The fierce gusts of wind, lashing the snow about them in bewildering eddies, made conversation difficult, and they pushed on in a silence broken only by an occasional word of encouragement from the Englishman. “All right?” he queried once, as Jean paused, battered and spent with the fury of the storm. She nodded speechlessly. She had no breath left to answer, but once again her lips curved in a plucky little smile. A fresh onslaught of the wind forced them onwards, and she staggered a little as it blustered by. “Here,” he said quickly. “Take my arm. It will be better when we get into the pine-wood. The trees there will give us some protection.” They struggled forward again, arm in arm. The swirling snow had blotted out the distant mountains; lowering storm-filled clouds made a grey twilight of the day, through which they could just discern ahead the vague, formless darkness of the pine-wood. Another ten minutes walking brought them to it, only to find that the blunted edge of the storm was almost counterbalanced by the added difficulties of the surrounding gloom. High up overhead they could hear the ominous creak and swing of great branches shaken like toys in the wind, and now and again the sharper crack of some limb wrenched violently from its parent trunk. Once there came the echoing crash of a tree torn up bodily and flung to earth. “It’s worse here,” declared Jean, “I think”--with a nervous laugh--“I think I’d rather die in the open!” “It might be preferable. Only you’re not going to die at all, if I can help it,” the Englishman returned composedly. But, cool though he appeared, he experienced a thrill of keen anxiety as they emerged from the pine-wood and his quick eyes scanned the dangerously rapid drifting of the snow. The wind was racing down the valley now, driving the snow before it and piling it up, inch by inch, foot by foot, against the steep ground which skirted the sheet of ice where they had been skating but a few hours before. Through the pitiless beating of the snow Jean strove to read her companion’s face. It was grim and set, the lean jaw thrust out a little and the grey eyes tense and concentrated. “Can we get through?” she asked, raising her voice so that it might carry against the wind. “If we can get through the drifted snow between here and the track on the left, we’re all right,” answered the man. “The wind’s slanting across the valley and there’ll be no drifts on the further side. I wish I’d got a bit of rope with me.” He felt in his pockets, finally producing the rolled-up strap of a suit-case. “That’s all I have,” he said discontentedly. “What’s it for?” “It’s to go round your waist. I don’t want to lose you”--smiling briefly--“if you should stumble into deep snow.” “Deep snow? But it’s only been snowing an hour or so!” she objected. “Evidently you don’t know what a blizzard can accomplish in the way of drifting during the course of an ‘hour or so.’ I do.”