d cheeks, snatch at his hands and try to
entangle his feet and ski in drifts. His eyes they blinded, and they
caught his breath away.

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 on