movement that threatens a sudden and uncontrollable start, still
pressing backward. The youth gave the leaders a powerful jerk, and
they plunged aside, and re-entered the road in the position in which
they were first halted. The sleigh was whirled from its dangerous
position, and upset, with the runners outward. The German and the
divine were thrown, rather unceremoniously, into the highway, but
without danger to their bones. Richard appeared in the air,
describing the segment of a circle, of which the reins were the radii,
and landed, at the distance of some fifteen feet, in that snow-bank
which the horses had dreaded, right end uppermost. Here, as he
instinctively grasped the reins, as drowning men seize at straws, he
admirably served the purpose of an anchor. The Frenchman, who was on
his legs, in the act of springing from the sleigh, took an aerial
flight also, much in the attitude which boys assume when they play
leap-frog, and, flying off in a tangent to the curvature of his
course, came into the snow-bank head foremost, w-here he remained,
exhibiting two lathy legs on high, like scarecrows waving in a corn-
field. Major Hartmann, whose self-possession had been admirably
preserved during the whole evolution, was the first of the party that
gained his feet and his voice.

“Ter deyvel, Richart!” he exclaimed in a voice half serious, half-
comical, “put you unload your sleigh very hautily!”

It may be doubtful whether the attitude in which Mr. Grant continued
for an instant after his overthrow was the one into which he had been
thrown, or was assumed, in humbling himself before the Power that he
reverenced, in thanksgiving at his escape. When he rose from his
knees, he began to gaze about him, with anxious looks, after the
welfare of his companions, while every joint in his body trembled with