He slipped in the damp snow, his knees were stiff, either from the party yesterday or from his low spirits; he felt that it was all over with the coasting-hill for that year, and with it, forever.

He longed for something different as he threaded his way in among the tree-trunks, where the snow fell softly.

A frightened ptarmigan screamed and fluttered a few yards away, but everything else stood as if awaiting a word which never was spoken.

But what his aspirations were, he did not distinctly know, only they concerned nothing at home, nothing abroad, neither pleasure nor work; but rather something far above, soaring upward like a song.

Soon all became concentrated in one defined desire, and this was to be confirmed in the spring, and on that occasion to be number one.