Gard confessed to himself that, alone, he would never have dared to face that perilous storm-swept bridge.

But the small hand of a girl made all the difference and he stepped alongside her without a tremor.
"B'en, Monsieur Gard, was I right ?" shouted Bernel in his ear, as they stepped within the shelter of the cutting on the farther side.
"You were right.

It's a terrible place in a gale." "You wait," shouted Bernel.

"We're not home yet." "No more Coupees, any way," and they bent again into the storm.
They had not gone more than a hundred yards when, through some freakish funnelling of the tumbled headlands, the gale gripped them like a giant playing with pigmies, caught them up, flung them bodily across the road and held Gard and Bernel pinned and panting against the green bank, while Nance disappeared over it into the shrieking darkness.
"Good heavens!" gasped Gard, fearful lest she should have been blown over the cliffs, and wriggled himself up under the ceaseless thrashing of the gale and was whirled off the top into the field beyond.
There the pressure was less, and, getting on to his hands and knees to crawl in search of Nance, he found her close beside him crouching in the lee of the grassy dyke.
He crept into shelter beside her, and presently, in the lull after a fiercer blast than usual, she set off, bent almost double, and in a moment they were in comparative quiet.

Nance crawled through a gap into the road and they found Bernel waiting for them.
"Knew you'd come through there.