‘This is either perfect folly or you have deceived me,’ she cried.

‘I shall learn how to use them in a minute,’ he said humbly.  He was conscious as he spoke that his twisted legs made but an unsteady pedestal, that the least push would have sent him headlong into the drift.

‘How could you say that you would go?’ she asked fiercely.

He looked down at his feet as schoolboys do when chidden, but for another reason.  The question as to whether or not he could get his snow-shoes headed again in the right direction weighed like lead upon his heart.

‘I thought that I could walk upon these things,’ he said, and he added, with such determination as honour flying from shame only knows, ’and I will walk on them and do your errand.’

With that, by carefully untwisting his legs, he faced again in the right direction, but, having lifted his right foot too high in the untwisting process, he found that the slender tail of its snow-shoe stuck down in the snow, setting the shoe pointing skyward and his toe, tied by the thongs, held prisoner about a foot above the snow.  He tried to kick, but the shoe became more firmly embedded.  He lost his balance, and only by a wild fling of his body, in which his arms went up into the air, did he regain his upright position.  The moment of calm which succeeded produced from him another remark.

‘It seems to me that you have got me now in closer bonds than before.’  As he spoke he turned his glance backward and saw that comment of his was needless.

The girl had at last yielded to laughter.  Worn out, no doubt, by a long-controlled excitement, laughter had now entirely overcome her.  Leaning her head on her hand and her shoulders against a pillar of the porch, she was shaking visibly from head to foot, and the effort she made to keep the sound of her amusement within check only seemed to make its hold upon her more absolute.

‘I don’t wonder you laugh,’ he said, feebly beginning to laugh himself a little.

But she did not make the slightest reply.  Her face was crimson; the ripples of her laughter went over her form as ripples of wind over a young tree.

He was forced to leave her thus.  By a miracle of determination, as it seemed, he freed his right shoe and made slow and wary strides forward.  He saw that he had exaggerated the width of his snow-shoes, but his progress now was still made upon the plan of keeping his feet wide apart, although not too wide for motion.  He knew that this was not the right method; he knew that she peered at him between her fingers and was more convulsed with laughter at his every step.  He was thankful to think that the falling flakes must soon begin to obscure his figure, but he did not dare to try another plan of walking while she watched, lest she should see him stop again.

CHAPTER V