In the deepening snow we moved slowly, the wheels slipping now and then, unable to grip.  Then, on a steep incline, there came a report like a revolver shot.  But it didn’t frighten me now.  I knew it meant a collapsed tyre, not a concealed murderer; but there couldn’t have been a much worse place for “jacking up.”  Nevertheless, it’s an ill tyre that blows up for its own good alone, and the forty minutes out of a waning afternoon made the chauffeur’s cold hands hot and the hot engine cold.

Starting on again, we had ten miles of desolation, then a tiny hamlet which seemed only to emphasize that desolation; again another ten-mile stretch of desert, and another hamlet; here and there a glimpse of the railway line, like a great black snake, lost in the snow; now and then the gilded picture of an ancient town, crowning some tall crag that stood up from the flat plain below like a giant bottle.  And there was one thrilling view of a high viaduct, flinging a spider’s web of glittering steel across a vast and shadowy ravine.  “Garabit!” said the chauffeur, as he saw it; and I remembered that this road was not new for him.  He did not talk much.  Was he thinking of the companion who perhaps had sat beside him before?  I wondered.  Was it because he thought continually of her that he looked at me wistfully sometimes, often in silence, wishing me away, maybe, and the woman who had spoilt his life by his side again for good or ill?

Suddenly we plunged into a deep snow-bank which deceitfully levelled a dip in the road, and the car stopped, trembling like a horse caught by the hind leg while in full gallop.

On went the first speed, most powerful of all, but not powerful enough to fight through snow nearly up to the hubs.  The Aigle was prisoned like a rat in a trap, and could neither go back nor forward.

“Well?” I questioned, half laughing, half frightened, at this fulfilment of the morning’s prophecy.

“Sit still, and I’ll try to push her through,” said Jack jumping out into the deep snow.  “It’s only a drift in a hollow, you see; and we should have got by the worst, just up there at St. Flour.”

I looked where his nod indicated, and saw a town as dark and seemingly as old as the rock out of which it grew, climbing a conical hill, to dominate all the wide, white reaches above which it stood, like an armoured sentinel on a watch-tower.  As I gazed, struck with admiration, which for an instant made me forget our plight, he began to push.  The car, surprised at his strength and determination, half decided to move, then changed her mind and refused to budge.  In a second, before he could guess what I meant to do, I had flashed out of my seat into the snow, and was wading in his tracks to help him when he snatched me up—­a hand on either side of my waist—­and swung me back into my place again.

“Little wretch!” he exclaimed.  “How dare you disobey me?”

Then I was vexed, for it was ignominious to be treated as a child, when I had wanted to aid him like a comrade.