"Are you not afraid?"
"I am just about as much afraid as you are"; and, to his amazement, he found her laughing.
"Well," he exclaimed, "if you can laugh under these circumstances, you exceed any woman I ever read or heard of. We are in twice as much danger as when I went out in the boat the other night."
"Are you now satisfied that Lottie Marsden, in particular, is not weak and cowardly, as compared with her braver sisters?"
Before he could answer, De Forrest growled, "Why don't you go on?"
Addie and Bel were cowering in the bottom of the sleigh, and supposed he was merely giving the horses a rest.
Just then there appeared a momentary lull in the gale; so he merely said: "Forgive me for even seeming to hint to the contrary," and then urged the horses forward.
The road now presented its side to the wind, and so was filled with drifts, while its lower side was a precipitous bank that shelved off into unknown depths. The horses plunged with difficulty through one drift, and the sleigh tipped dangerously. Addie and Bel screamed, and De Forrest began, in trepidation, to realize their situation.
The poor beasts were soon floundering through another drift. Suddenly there came a sharp crack, as if something had broken, and one of the horses appeared to have fallen. Worse still, the lower runner of the sleigh seemed sinking in the snow to that degree that a moment later they would be overturned into the darkness that yawned in the direction of the steep mountain slope.
Hemstead instantly sprang out on the lower side, with the purpose of preventing the accident. Lottie as quickly sprang out on the upper side, and cried: "You push, and I will hold"; and so it happened that she did quite as much as he in saving the party from disaster. Indeed, if the sleigh had gone over, it would have carried him who was on the lower side down with it.