"Pretty hard going for an old man of sixty," the stranger said, stopping to get his breath. The storm seemed to choke him.
Soon he begged to be let rest, and when Fred tried to start him again he experienced some difficulty. The cold was getting into his very bones, and was causing a fatal drowsiness.
Fred told him this and urged him to put forth his greatest efforts. They were now but a mile from Fred's house. Every few minutes the light in the window glimmered through the storm, the only ray of light in the maze of whirling snow which so often thickened and darkened and blotted it out altogether.
When they were about half a mile from the house, the old man, without warning, dropped into the snow and begged Fred to go on without him. He was all right, he declared, warm and comfortable, and wanted to rest.
"You'll freeze to death!" Fred cried. "That's the beginning of it."
"Feel very comfortable," the old man mumbled.
Fred coaxed, reasoned, entreated, but all in vain. He shook the old man, scolded, threatened, but all to no purpose.
There was only one thing to be done.
Fred threw off his own coat, which was a heavy one, and picked the old man up, though he was no light weight, and set off with him.
But the man objected to being carried, and, squirming vigorously, slipped out of Fred's arms, and once more declared his intention of sleeping in the snow.