I have often observed how easily my own judgment
was deluded.
But still I felt so absolutely sure that I should know
when I approached the bridge that, perhaps through
overconfidence, I was caught napping. There was another
fact which I did not take sufficiently into account at
the time. I have mentioned that we had had a "soft spell."
In fact, it had been so warm for a day or two that the
older snow had completely iced over. Now, much as I
thought I was watching out, we were suddenly and quite
unexpectedly right on the downward slope before I even
realized that we were near it.
As I said, on this slope the trail described a double
curve, and it hit the bridge at an angle from the west.
The first turn and the behaviour of the horses were what
convinced me that I had inadvertently gone too far. If
I had stopped the horses at the point where the slope
began and then started them downward at a slow walk, we
should still have reached the bridge at too great a speed;
for the slope had offered the last big wind from the
north a sheer brow, and it was swept clean of new snow,
thus exposing the smooth ice underneath; the snow that
had drifted from the south, on the other hand, had been
thrown beyond the river, on to the lower northern bank;
the horses skidded, and the weight of the cutter would
have pushed them forward.
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