No sober man would have chosen this track, for it was heavy for the horse, and was carried over several rough bridges across the large drains which had lately been cut to carry off the water from the swamp.
The deep snow which had fallen, with little previous frost, lay soft and thick over the whole ground; it covered the holes in the bridges, and so choked up the drains that in many places they were completely concealed, and what appeared to be a smooth level surface of ground might really be a dangerous pitfall.

Here, however, Clarkson chose to go.

He flogged his horse unmercifully, and the sleigh flew over the ground, scattering the snow and striking every moment against some roughness of the road which it concealed.

They passed one of the drains safely, though the round logs of which the bridge was formed shook and rattled under them; but between that and the next, the tipsy driver turned quite out of the track, and drove on at the same headlong pace towards the open trench.
At the very brink the horse stopped; he tried to turn aside, but a tremendous lash of the whip urged him on; he leaped forward and just cleared the drain, but the weight of the sleigh dragged him backwards, and the whole mass crashed through the snow and the thin ice under it into the bottom of the cutting.
Some of the men who had watched Clarkson drive off from the tavern had not yet returned to their work, and the place where the accident happened was not so far off but that something of it could be seen.

Two or three started off, and soon arrived at the spot where the sleigh had disappeared.
The drain, though deep, was not very wide, and if, even at the very moment of the fall, Clarkson had been capable of exerting himself, he might have escaped; as it was, he lay among the broken fragments of his sleigh and shouted out imprecations upon his horse, which had been dragged down on the top of him.