It was too late for the driver to rein up his horse.

One foot struck the child, throwing him out of the track of the sleigh.

He was insensible when taken up, bleeding and apparently dead.

A few people came out of the small houses in the neighborhood, attracted by the accident, but no one knew the child or offered to take him in.
There were two ladies in the sleigh, and both were greatly pained and troubled.

After a hurried consultation, one of them reached out her hands for the child, and as she received and covered him with the buffalo-robe said something to the driver, who turned his horse's head and drove off at a rapid speed..