The driver did not speak, but the other passenger craned over his back, and said explanatorily:—­

“I reckon ye don’t know these storms; this kind o’ dry snow don’t stick and don’t clog.  Look!”

Indeed, between the volleys, Masterton could see that the road was perfectly bare and wind-swept, and except slight drifts and banks beside outlying bushes and shrubs,—­which even then were again blown away before his eyes,—­the level landscape was unclothed and unchanged.  Where these mysterious snow pellets went to puzzled and confused him; they seemed to vanish, as they had appeared, into the air about them.

“I’d make a straight rush for the next station,” said the other passenger confidently to the driver.  “If we’re stuck, we’re that much on the way; if we turn back now, we’ll have to take the grade anyway when the storm’s over, and neither you nor I know when THAT’ll be.  It may be only a squall just now, but it’s gettin’ rather late in the season.  Just pitch in and drive all ye know.”

The driver laid his lash on the horses, and for a few moments the heavy vehicle dashed forward in violent conflict with the storm.  At times the elastic hickory framework of its domed leather roof swayed and bent like the ribs of an umbrella; at times it seemed as if it would be lifted bodily off; at times the whole interior of the vehicle was filled with a thin smoke by drifts through every cranny.  But presently, to Masterton’s great relief, the interminable level seemed to end, and between the whitened blasts he could see that the road was descending.  Again the horses were urged forward, and at last he could feel that the vehicle began to add the momentum of its descent to its conflict with the storm.  The blasts grew less violent, or became only the natural resistance of the air to their dominant rush.  With the cessation of the snow volleys and the clearing of the atmosphere, the road became more strongly defined as it plunged downward to a terrace on the mountain flank, several hundred feet below.  Presently they came again upon a thicker growth of bushes, and here and there a solitary fir.  The wind died away; the cold seemed to be less bitter.  Masterton, in his relief, glanced smilingly at his companions on the box, but the driver’s mouth was compressed as he urged his team forward, and the other passenger looked hardly less anxious.  They were now upon the level terrace, and the storm apparently spending its fury high up and behind them.  But in spite of the clearing of the air, he could not but notice that it was singularly dark.  What was more singular, the darkness seemed to have risen from below, and to flow in upon them as they descended.  A curtain of profound obscurity, darker even than the mountain wall at their side, shut out the horizon and the valley below.  But for the temperature, Masterton would have thought a thunderstorm was closing in upon them.  An odd feeling of uneasiness crept over him.