The terror of the heights and snow and winter desolation urged him forward in the maddest race with death a human being ever knew; and so terrific was the speed that before the gold and crimson had left the summits to touch the ice-lips of the lower glaciers, he saw the friendly forest far beneath swing up and welcome him.

And it was then, moving slowly along the edge of the woods, he saw a light.  A man was carrying it.  A procession of human figures was passing in a dark line laboriously through the snow.  And—­he heard the sound of chanting.

Instinctively, without a second’s hesitation, he changed his course.  No longer flying at an angle as before, he pointed his ski straight down the mountain-side.  The dreadful steepness did not frighten him.  He knew full well it meant a crashing tumble at the bottom, but he also knew it meant a doubling of his speed—­with safety at the end.  For, though no definite thought passed through his mind, he understood that it was the village cure who carried that little gleaming lantern in the dawn, and that he was taking the Host to a chalet on the lower slopes—­to some peasant in extremis.  He remembered her terror of the church and bells.  She feared the holy symbols.

There was one last wild cry in his ears as he started, a shriek of the wind before his face, and a rush of stinging snow against closed eyelids—­and then he dropped through empty space.  Speed took sight from him.  It seemed he flew off the surface of the world.

* * * * *

Indistinctly he recalls the murmur of men’s voices, the touch of strong arms that lifted him, and the shooting pains as the ski were unfastened from the twisted ankle ... for when he opened his eyes again to normal life he found himself lying in his bed at the post office with the doctor at his side.  But for years to come the story of “mad Hibbert’s” ski-ing at night is recounted in that mountain village.  He went, it seems, up slopes, and to a height that no man in his senses ever tried before.  The tourists were agog about it for the rest of the season, and the very same day two of the bolder men went over the actual ground and photographed the slopes.  Later Hibbert saw these photographs.  He noticed one curious thing about them—­though he did not mention it to any one: 

There was only a single track.

* * * * *

Sand

I

As Felix Henriot came through the streets that January night the fog was stifling, but when he reached his little flat upon the top floor there came a sound of wind.  Wind was stirring about the world.  It blew against his windows, but at first so faintly that he hardly noticed it.  Then, with an abrupt rise and fall like a wailing voice that sought to claim attention, it called him.  He peered through the window into the blurred darkness, listening.