David Thryng is the third son of a British peer of the realm. Unwilling to marry into money without love, and unwilling to spill blood on the battlefield, he decides to become a doctor. David travels to Canada, where he studies under Doctor Hoyle. When David becomes ill, Hoyle sends him to recuperate at his cabin, perched high on a promontory in the mountains of North Carolina.When the story begins, David's train is arriving at the tiny mountain crossing. David disembarks just in time to rescue a young Hoyle, named after the erstwhile doctor, David's mentor. Hoyle and his beautiful but quiet sister Cass take David home to mother, because the night has fallen, with fresh snow. At their cabin, David tends mother's broken hip.The snow had ceased falling. No wind stirred among the trees that covered the hillsides, and every shrub, every leaf and twig, still bore its feathery, white load. Slowly the train labored upward, with two engines to take it the steepest part of the climb from the valley below. David Thryng gazed out into the quiet, white wilderness and was glad. He hoped Carew's Crossing was not beyond all this, where the ragged edge of civilization, out of which the toiling train had so lately lifted them, would begin again.He glanced from time to time at the young woman near the door who sat as the bishop had left her, one slight hand grasping the handle of her basket, and with an expression on her face as placid and fraught with mystery as the scene without. The train began to crawl more heavily, and, looking down, Thryng saw that they were crossing a trestle over a deep gorge before skirting the mountain on the other side. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might be carried beyond his station. He stopped the smiling young brakeman who was passing with his flag."Let me know when we come to Carew's Crossing, will you?""Next stop, suh. Are you foh there, suh?""Yes. How soon?""Half an houh mo', suh. I'll be back d'rectly and help you off, suh. It's a flag station. We don't stop there in winter 'thout we're called to, suh. Hotel's closed now.""Hotel? Is there a hotel?" Thryng's voice betokened dismay."Yes, suh. It's a right gay little place in summah, suh." He passed on, and Thryng gathered his scattered effects. Ill and weary, he was glad to find his long journey so nearly at an end.On either side of the track, as far as eye could see, was a snow-whitened wilderness, seemingly untouched by the hand of man, and he felt as if he had been carried back two hundred years. The only hint that these fastnesses had been invaded by human beings was an occasional rough, deeply red wagon road, winding off among the hills.The long trestle crossed, the engines labored slowly upward for a time, then, turning a sharp curve, began to descend, tearing along the narrow track with a speed that caused the coaches to rock and sway; and thus they reached Carew's Crossing, dropping down to it like a rushing torrent.Immediately Thryng found himself deposited in the melting snow some distance from the station platform, and at the same instant, above the noise of the retreating train, he heard a cry: "Oh, suh, help him, help him! It's poor little Hoyle!" The girl whom he had watched, and about whom he had been wondering, flashed by him and caught at the bridle of a fractious colt, that was rearing and plunging near the corner of the station."Poor little Hoyle! Help him, suh, help him!" she cried, clinging desperately, while the frantic animal swung her off her feet, close to the flying heels of the kicking mule at his side.