"I am not a bit tired, but you look just worn out." "No, no, I can't have you dragging a sledge.

But be careful and keep the dogs from rushing down the slopes and overrunning me," he answered, then started forward again.
The flakes were falling faster now, but they were so fine that they would have scarcely counted had it not been for the number of them.
At the end of the next half-hour the fall was like a fog of whirling atoms, and the travellers looked like moving snow figures.
The dogs were still running well, and Katherine found it hard work to keep them back, especially on the slopes, where they would persist in trying to make rushes, so getting thoroughly out of hand.

She was keeping them back down one long bad slope which abounded in pitfalls, when to her horror she heard her father cry out, then saw him and his sledge disappear, shooting into a whirling smother of snow.
[Illustration: 'Duke Radford meets with an accident] With a sharp order to the dogs to stop, which they promptly obeyed by dropping in four panting heaps on the snow, she went forward alone to see what had happened to her father.

It was a simple enough accident, and one that had to be constantly guarded against in drawing a sledge when travelling on snowshoes.

In going down the slope the sledge had travelled proportionally faster than the man, and, catching against the framework of one of the snowshoes, had flung him with tremendous force between two trees.