The road was dropping and growing harder. No longer crunching under her feet, the snow beaten flat showed here and there dark streaks of ice, and her puttee-bandaged legs, flexible only at the knees, felt like sticks above her feet lost and helpless in the thick boots that seemed to walk of themselves. The dropping road took a sharp turn towards the valley, showing ahead a short empty stretch and another sharp turn, revealing it as the winding trail up which she had come last night. On the right it was joined by a long track running steeply down into a wilderness of snow in the midst of whose far distances appeared high up a little bridge half hidden amongst pines. The track was dotted with pigmy forms. “_Ash_-tongue!” A fierce hoarse voice just behind, and joining it another, clear and ringing: “_Ach_-tooooong.” Plunging into the roadside drift she turned in time to see a toboggan bearing upon it a boy prone, face foremost eagerly out-thrust, shoot down the slanting road, take the bend at an angle that just cleared the fence and dart at a terrific pace down the slope towards the wilderness; followed by the girl with the ringing voice, lightly seated, her toboggan throwing her up as it bumped skimming from ridge to ridge down the uneven road. She took the bend smoothly with space to spare and flew on down the slope with lifted chin and streaming hair. Both mad. Children of the reckless English who had discovered the Swiss winter. This terrific scooting was not the tobogganing of which she had heard in London. Two more figures were coming, giving her excuse to wait lest they were coming her way and watch their passing from the drift that was like warm wool, knee-deep. They were women, coming slowly, paddling themselves along with little sticks. They took the bend with ironic caution and went on down the slope, still furiously stabbing the snow with their little sticks, their high, peaked cowls making them look like seated gnomes. Aware of intense cold invading her feet, she plunged out into the road and was beating her snow-caked puttees when an intermittent grinding sound approaching brought her upright: an aged couple side by side, white-haired and immensely muffled, sitting very grave and stern behind the legs protruding stiffly on either side the heads of their toboggans and set from moment to moment heels downwards upon the road to check a possible increase of their slow triumphant pace. Triumph. Behind the sternness that defied the onlooker to find their pose lacking in dignity was triumph. Young joy; for these who might well be patrolling in bath-chairs the streets of a cathedral town.