The night express from St. Petersburg had deposited them on the platform in the early morning. Steinmetz had preceded them. Closed sleighs from Osterno were awaiting them. A luxurious breakfast was prepared at the hotel. Relays of horses were posted along the road. The journey to Osterno had been carefully planned and arranged by Steinmetz--a king among organizers. The sleigh drive across the steppe was to be accomplished in ten hours. The snow had begun to fall as they clattered across the floating bridge of Tver. It had fallen ever since, and the afternoon lowered gloomily. In America such visitations are called "blizzards"; here in Russia it is merely "the snow." The freezing wind is taken as a matter of course. At a distance of one hundred miles from Tver, the driver of the sleigh containing Etta, Maggie, and Paul had suddenly rolled off his perch. His hands were frostbitten; a piteous blue face peered out at his master through ice-laden eyebrows, mustache, and beard. In a moment Maggie was out in the snow beside the two men, while Etta hastily closed the door. "He is all right," said Paul; "it is only the cold. Pour some brandy into his mouth while I hold the ice aside. _Don't_ take off your gloves. The flask will stick to your fingers." Maggie obeyed with her usual breezy readiness, turning to nod reassurance to Etta, who, truth to tell, had pulled up the rime-covered windows, shutting out the whole scene. "He must come inside," said Maggie. "We are nice and warm with all the hot-water cans." Paul looked rather dubiously toward the sleigh. "You can carry him, I suppose?" said the girl cheerfully. "He is not very big--he is all fur coat." Etta looked rather disgusted, but made no objection, while Paul lifted the frozen man into the seat he had just vacated. "When you are cold I will drive," cried Maggie, as Paul shut the door. "I should love it." Thus it came about that a single sleigh was speeding across the plain of Tver. Paul, with the composure that comes of a large experience, gathered the reins in his two hands, driving with both and with extended arms, after the manner of Russian yemschiks. For a man must accommodate himself to circumstance, and fingerless gloves are not conducive to a finished style of handling the ribbons. This driver knew that the next station was twenty miles off; that at any moment the horses might break down or plunge into a drift. He knew that in the event of such emergencies it would be singularly easy for four people to die of cold within a few miles of help. But he had faced such possibilities a hundred times before in this vast country, where the standard price of a human life is no great sum. He was not, therefore, dismayed, but rather took delight in battling with the elements, as all strong men should, and most of them, thank Heaven, do.