Deftly he fastened the strap round her waist, and, taking the loose end, gave it a double turn about his wrist before gripping it firmly in his hand. “Now, keep close behind me. Regard me”--laughing shortly--“as a snow-plough. And if I go down deep rather suddenly, throw your weight backward as much as you can.” He moved forward, advancing cautiously. He was badly handicapped by the lack of even a stick with which to gauge the depth of drifting snow in front of him, and he tested each step before trusting his full weight to the delusive, innocent-looking surface. Jean went forward steadily beside him, a little to the rear. The snow was everywhere considerably more than ankle-deep, and at each step she could feel that the slope of the ground increased and with it the depth of the drift through which they toiled. The cold was intense. The icy fingers of the snow about her feet seemed to creep upward and upward till her whole body felt numbed and dead, and as she stumbled along in the Englishman’s wake, buffeted and beaten by the storm, her feet ached as if leaden weights were attached to them. But she struggled on pluckily. The man in front of her was taking the brunt of the hardship, cutting a path for her, as it were, with his own body as he forged ahead, and she was determined not to add to his work by putting any weight on the strap which bound them together. All at once he gave a sharp exclamation and pulled up abruptly. “It’s getting much deeper,” he called out, turning back to her. “You’ll never get through, hampered with your skirts. I’m going to carry you.” Jean shook her head, and shouted back: “_You_ wouldn’t get through, handicapped like that. No, let’s push on as we are. I’ll manage somehow.” A glint of something like admiration flickered in his eyes. “Game little devil!” he muttered. But the wind caught up the words, and Jean did not hear them. He raised his voice again, releasing the strap from his wrist as he spoke. “You’ll do what I tell you. It’s only a matter of getting through this bit of drift, and we’ll be out of the worst of it. Put your arms round my neck.” Then, as she hesitated: “Do you hear? Put your arms round my neck--_quick!_” The dominant ring in his voice impelled her. Obediently she clasped her arms about his neck as he stooped, and the next moment she felt herself swung upward, almost as easily as a child, and firmly held in the embrace of arms like steel. For a few yards he made good progress, thrusting his way through the yielding snow. But the task of carrying a young woman of average height and weight is no light one, even to a strong man and without the added difficulty of plunging through snow that yields treacherously at every step, and Jean could guess the strain entailed upon him by the double burden. “Oh, do put me down!” she urged him. “I’m sure I can walk it--really I am.” He halted for a moment. “Look down!” he said. “Think you could travel in that?”