Come on in and we’ll see what can be done.”

Alan gave a startled, hopeless look at his car, and then turned and plunged after his new friend, wondering what he should do next. As he wallowed through a drift because he hadn’t kept close to his guide he had a sickening sensation of fierce cold hands gripping his thinly clad ankles. Snow in his shoes. Why hadn’t he stopped to put on his galoshes?

The two fought their way back in the teeth of the wind and arrived at last in shelter once more.

“Now,” said Alan, shivering with cold as he stood exuding snow onto the clean linoleum-covered hall, “would you mind saying over again what you told me out there? I couldn’t be sure what you said.”

Lance grinned.

“I said you had stripped the teeth from the gears in the differential. That’s easy to do with chains in a snow like this. Tearing, grinding sound in the rear when it stopped, you know.” And Lance put up his fingers and illustrated the stripped gears. “But the question is what can I do for you? You can’t get that car fixed in a hurry, and not out there in this storm anyway. It’s got to be towed to a garage, and I haven’t even got my own car to help tow you. You’ll have to wait till Bill Gates gets here. Where was it you were going? You’d better stay here all night. This storm is something fierce, and getting worse all the time.”

Alan shook his head.

“It’s impossible. I’m carrying some medicine to a woman who will die if she doesn’t get it. I gave my word of honor. I’ve got to get it there by six o’clock. The doctor said he wouldn’t answer for the consequences if she didn’t have it by then.”

“That’s different!” said Lance suddenly grave. “Of course you have to go. Where is it?”

“It’s to a sort of castle on a mountain. There’s a Mrs. Watt there very sick. It’s her son-in-law’s home. The name is Farley.”

“Not Tom Farley’s big stone house on the cliff!” exclaimed Lance with startled eyes. “Man alive, you couldn’t have got there even if your car hadn’t broken down. Not in a car! It’s ten miles, around by the river road, but I just heard a few minutes ago when I was telephoning that there’s a drift twelve feet high there at one place, that shuts the pass off entirely. They are utterly shut off up there except from this side. There’s only one way to get up there now—and I’m not so sure of it—and that’s by the trail up the mountain, and you have to take it on your feet.”

Alan looked into the other young man’s eyes and seemed to read just what that would man. His face grew white and stern and he looked down for an instant and then up and straightened his shoulders, setting his lips.

“Then I’ll have to take that way!” he said. “I staked my life on it and it’s that woman’s life or mine it seems, so here goes. Show me the way and tell me how far it is.”

He ended with a brave smile.

Daryl in the shadows of the dining room was watching him, comparing him with another, wondering what Harold would have said if confronted by such a demand.

They were all watching him, the mother and the father from the other room, and looking with startled eyes at their own boy, a frightened question in their hearts.

Lance looked at Alan steadily for an instant, and then he answered quietly, “It’s only three miles up the mountain on this side, but it’s a hard climb up the cliff. I’ll go with you, of course.”

“No!” said Alan decidedly. “I couldn’t let you.