There I was some two hundred paces behind him.

I, his death, was behind him, and in front of him shone the snow.
For a moment he hesitated, and I heard the heavy breathing of his horse in the great stillness.

Then he turned and faced the slope, driving his spurs into the brute's sides.

The snow was hard, for here the frost bit sharply, and for a while, though it was so steep, the horse travelled over it better than he had done along the pathway.

Now, as before, there was only one road that he could take, for we passed up the crest of a ridge, a pleat as it were in the garment of the mountain, and on either side were steeps of snow on which neither horse nor man might keep his footing.