All that night their horses strained up the mountain road amid the whirling sleet.

At times the wind roaring down a gorge would set the carriage rocking; at times they stuck fast in drifts; and Wogan and Gaydon must leap from the box and plunging waist-deep in the snow, must drag at the horses and push at the wheels.

The pace was too slow; Wogan seemed to hear on every gust of wind the sound of a galloping company.
"We have lost twelve hours, more than twelve hours now," he repeated and repeated to Gaydon.

All the way to Ala they would still be in the Emperor's territory.

It needed only a single courier to gallop past them, and at either Roveredo or Trent they would infallibly be taken.
Wogan fingered his pistols, straining his eyes backwards down the road.
At daybreak the snow stopped; the carriage rolled on high among the mountains under a grey sky; and here and there, at a wind of the road, Wogan caught a glimpse of the towers and chimney-tops of Innspruck, or had within his view a stretch of the slope they had climbed.