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By Root 1429 0

stationmaster, but he was unable to give him any precise information on conditions up the line. So far, no train had arrived; they had merely been informed by telegraph that the stopping train from Paris was being held at Rouen as a precaution. La Lison set off once more, lumbering slowly down the gentle three-league descent to Barentin. By now it was daylight. But the light was very pale, a livid glow that seemed to emanate from the snow itself. The snow continued to fall more thickly, as if dawn were descending from above, cloudy and shivering, strewing the heavens’ waste across the surface of the earth. As it grew lighter, the wind rose sharply, driving the snowflakes towards them like bullets. The fireman had to keep taking his shovel to remove the snow at the back of the tender, between the two water-tanks. The countryside on both sides of the train appeared so unrecognizable that the two men felt they were travelling through a dream world; the broad, open fields, the lush meadows surrounded by green hedges, the little orchards planted with apple trees were now but a sea of white with small waves rippling across its surface, a vast, empty expanse, cold and frozen, in which everything seemed to dissolve into whiteness. The engine driver stood on the footplate, his face lashed by the gusts of wind, his hand on the reversing wheel. He was beginning to feel the cold that bit into him mercilessly.

When they eventually reached Barentin, Monsieur Bessière, the stationmaster, came up to the engine and told Jacques that heavy falls of snow had been reported at La Croix-de-Maufras.

‘You might be able to get through,’ he said, ‘but it will be difficult.’

Jacques lost his temper.

‘God Almighty!’ he yelled. ‘What did I tell them at Beuzeville? They could easily have put another engine on! We’re going to be in trouble, I’m telling you!’

The guard had left his van; he too was getting annoyed. He was frozen stiff from sitting in his observation cabin; he said he couldn’t tell a signal from a telegraph post. They might just as well have been travelling blind in all this snow!

‘Anyway,’ said Monsieur Bessière, ‘you’ve been warned.’

The passengers were beginning to wonder why there was such a long delay in this silent, snow-bound station; there was nothing happening on the platform, no carriage doors opening and closing. People started to lower their windows and look out. There was a very large woman with two charming, fair-haired young girls, her daughters no doubt, all three unmistakably English, and a little further down the train a pretty young woman with dark hair, with a man rather older than her who was pulling her back into the compartment. There were two men, one older and one younger, leaning out of the windows, talking to each other from one compartment to the next. But as Jacques looked down the line of carriages, he saw only one person - Séverine. She too was leaning from her carriage, looking along the train towards him, obviously very concerned. Dear Séverine! How worried she must be! His heart ached to think of her there, so near yet so far, and in such danger. He would have given anything to have arrived in Paris and to have brought her there safe and sound.

‘Come on,’ said the stationmaster, ‘you’d better get going. There’s no point in making everyone nervous.’

He gave the all clear. The guard, who had climbed back into his van, blew his whistle, and once again La Lison was on her way.

Jacques immediately sensed that the condition of the line had changed. They were no longer on the plateau, with the train crossing an endless carpet of thick snow like a ship ploughing its way through the sea, leaving a wake behind it; they were now entering a more rugged country of hills and valleys that rose and fell continuously all the way to Malaunay. Here the snow had not settled evenly. In some places the track was clear, but in others the line was blocked by huge drifts. The wind had blown the snow away from the embankments but had driven it into the cuttings. A continual succession of hazards confronted them, stretches