But Heavens! how the snow fell! It was partly screened by the branches, but all the same it was piling itself up deep everywhere.

My legs seemed made of lead, my head burned, and there were fiery pains over all my body.

I stumbled on blindly, without a notion of any direction, determined only to keep going to the last.

For I knew that if I once lay down I would never rise again.
When I was a boy I was fond of fairy tales, and most of the stories I remembered had been about great German forests and snow and charcoal burners and woodmen's huts.

Once I had longed to see these things, and now I was fairly in the thick of them.