deadly yet somehow sweet, and hard to resist. He felt like sinking down upon the snow and lying there. They had been climbing for five hours! It was, of course, the warning of complete exhaustion.

With a great effort he fought and overcame it. It passed as suddenly as it came.

"We'll turn," he said with a decision he hardly felt. “It will be dawn before we reach the village again. Come at once! It's time for home!"

The sense of exhilaration had utterly left him. An emotion that was akin to fear swept coldly through him. But her whispering answer turned it instantly to terror-a terror that gripped him horribly and turned him weak and unresisting.

"Our home is-here!" A burst of wildish laughter, loud and shrill, accompanied the words. It was like a whistling wind. The wind had risen, and clouds obscured the moon. "A little higher-where we cannot hear the bells," she cried, and for the first time took him deliberately by the hand.

And Hibbert tried to turn away in escape, and so trying, found for the first time that the power of the snow-that other power which does not exhilarate but suffocates-was on him. The smothering weakness that it brings to exhausted men, luring them to the sleep of death in her clinging soft embrace, lulling the will and conquering all desire for life-this was awfully upon him. His feet were heavy and entangled. He could not

turn, or move.

The girl was close beside him; he felt her chilly breath upon his cheeks; her hair passed blindingly across his eyes; that icy wind came with her. He saw her whiteness close. Again it seemed his sight passed through her into space as though she had no face. Her arms were round his neck. She drew him softly downwards to his knees. He sank; he yielded; he obeyed. Her weight was upon him, smothering, delicious. . . . The snow was to his waist. . . She kissed him softly on the lips, the eyes, all over his face. And then she spoke his name in that voice of love and wonder, the voice that held the accent of two others— both taken over long ago by Death—of his mother, and of the woman he had loved.

He made one feeble effort to resist. Then, realizing even while he struggled, that this soft weight about his heart was sweeter than anything life could ever bring, he let his muscles relax, and sank back into the soft oblivion of the covering snow. Her kisses bore him into sleep.

VII

They say that men who know the sleep of exhaustion in the snow find no awakening on the hither side of death. . . . The hours passed and the moon sank down below the white world's rim. Then, suddenly there came a little crash upon his breast and neck, and Hibbert-woke.

He slowly turned bewildered, heavy eyes upon the desolate mountains stared dizzily about him, tried to rise. At first his muscles would not act; a numbing, aching pain possessed him. He uttered a long, wild cry for help, and heard its faintness swallowed by the wind. And then he understood vaguely why he was only warm-not dead. This very wind that took his cry had built up a sheltering mound of snow against his body while he slept. Like a curving wave it ran beside him. It was the breaking of its over-toppling edge that caused the crash, and the coldness of the mass against his neck that woke him.

Dawn kissed the eastern sky; pale gleams of gold shot every peak with splendor; but ice was in the air, and the dry and frozen snow blew with the wind like powder from the surface of the slopes. He saw the points of his ski projecting just below him. Then he remembered. It seems he had just strength enough to realize that, could he but rise and stand, he might fly with terrific impetus towards the woods and village far beneath. The ski would carry him. But if he failed and fell.

How he contrived it Hibbert never knew; this fear of death somehow called out his whole available reserve force. He rose slowly, balanced a moment, then, taking the angle of an immense zigzag, started down the awful slopes like an arrow from a bow. And automatically the splendid muscles of the practised ski-er and athlete saved and guided him; for he was hardly conscious of controlling either speed or direction. The snow stung his

face and eyes; ridge after ridge flew past; the summits raced across the sky; the valley leaped up as with mighty bounds to meet him; he scarcely felt the ground beneath his feet as the huge slopes and distance melted before the lightning speed of that descent from death to life.

He took it in four mile-long zigzags, and it was the turning at each corner that nearly finished him, for then the strain of balancing taxed to the verge of collapse the remnants of his strength.

Slopes that have taken hours to climb can be descended in a short half hour, but Hibbert had lost all count of time. Quite other thoughts and feelings mastered him in that wild, swift dropping through the air that was like the flight of a bird. For ever close upon his heels came following forms and voices with the whirling snow-dust. He heard that little silvery voice of death and laughter at his back. Shrill and wild, with the whistling of the wind past his ears, he caught its pursuing tones, but in anger now, no longer soft and coaxing. And it was accompanied; she did not follow alone. It seemed a host of these flying figures of the snow chased furiously just behind him. He felt them smite his neck and 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 with pink the ice-lips of the lower glaciers, he saw the friendly forest far beneath swing up and welcome him.

And it was then there came the strangest thing of all. For 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. 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 appalling 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 curé who carried that little gleaming lantern in the dawn, and that he was taking the Host to a châlet 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.

For years to come the story of "mad Hibbert's " ski-ing at night will be 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 that there was only a single track... but he did not mention it to anyone.

THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN LADY

ANNA GARLIN SPENCER

T is recorded that Alfred of England, the Good and the

I'

Great, was illiterate until the age of twelve years, and that

he was then invited to learning by his charming young stepmother, Judith, the granddaughter of Charlemagne and also of that earlier Judith who was in her day "the most accomplished woman in France." The pretty story runs, that the tactful stepmother showed the sons of Ethelwolf, of whom Alfred was the youngest, a book of Saxon poetry, beautifully illuminated, and promised it as a gift to the one who should earliest learn to read it. Whereupon Alfred spoke first and asked: "Will you really give that book to him who can first understand and repeat it?" At this, we are told, his stepmother "smiled with satisfaction" and confirmed the promise; upon which the boy took the book from her hand and "went to his master to read it and in due time brought it back to her and recited it."

If, as Professor Cook suggests in the preface to his translation of the epic fragment-Judith-the Saxon poem promised as a reward for learning to read, was this same heroic song, which in subtle compliment by its author bore her name, we have in this incident of Alfred's stepmother a complete illustration of the social value of the lady at her best. Inspiring works of genius by her loveliness and sympathetic appreciation, lifting and sweetening social intercourse by the higher companionships of literature and art, and handing on the fruits of learning and the gifts of imagination to ardent youth, the lady of this type is the fair link between the intellectual achievements of the race and the social life of cultured leisure.

The lady is but the woman of the favored social class; but she is more than a member of a special class; she is the earliest of womanhood to attain individuality. She is the first person singular of the female sex. She begins her career as a belle of some savage tribe; some maiden of unusual beauty and attractiveness, according to the prevailing standards of her time