t. So he walked off in the direction of St. Moritz and hid behind a
tree, reposing upon the deeply rooted instinct of not being responsible
for what he did not see.

Winn regarded the run methodically, placed his toboggan on the summit
of the leap, and looked down at the thin, blue streak stretching into
the distance. The valley appeared to be entirely empty; there was
nothing visibly moving in it except a little distant smoke on the way to
Samaden. The run looked very cold and very narrow; the nearest banks
stood up like cliffs.

Winn strapped a rake to his left foot, and calculated that the instant
he felt the ice under him he must dig into it, otherwise he would go
straight over the first bank. Then he crouched over his toboggan, threw
himself face downward, and felt it spring into the air.

He kept no very definite recollection of the sixty-odd seconds that
followed. The ice rose up at him like a wall; the wind--he had not
previously been aware of the faintest draught of air--cut into his eyes
and forehead like fire. His lips blistered under it.

He felt death at every dizzy, dwindling second--death knotted up and
racketing, so imminent that he wouldn't have time to straighten himself
out or let go of his toboggan before he would be tossed out into the
empty air.

He remembered hearing a man say that if you fell on the Cresta and
didn't let go of your toboggan, it knocked you to pieces. His hands were
fastened on the runners as if they were clamped down with iron. The
scratching of the rake behind him sounded appalling in the surrounding
silence.

He shot up the first bank, shaving the top by the thinness of a hair,
wobbled sickeningly back on to the straight, regained his grip, shot the
next bank more easily, and whirled madly down between the iron walls. He
felt as if he were crawling slowly as a fly crawls up a pane of glass,
in a buzzing eternity.

Then he was bumped across the road and shot under the bridge. There was
a hill at the end of the run. As he flew up it he became for the first
time aware of pace. The toboggan took it like a racing-cutter, and at
the top rose six feet into the air, and plunged into the nearest
snow-drift.

Winn crawled out, feeling very sick and shaken, and as if every bone in
his body was misplaced.

"Oh, you idiot! You idiot! you unbounded, God-forsaken idiot!" a voice
exclaimed in his ears. "You've given me the worst two minutes of my
life!"

Winn looked around him mo