On a snowy night, a country doctor desperately seeks a way to reach a very sick patient in a village some fifty miles away. His own horse died from overexertion the night before, and Rosa, his servant girl, has found no other horse in the village for his carriage. While absentmindedly searching his barnyard, he accidentally knocks open the door to an unused pigsty, only to find there two powerfully built horses and a groom. He instructs Rosa to help the groom hitch the horses to his carriage, but the groom attacks her as soon as she gets near him. The doctor climbs into the carriage but is reluctant to leave when the groom says that he plans to stay behind with Rosa, which causes her to run screaming into the house. The doctor protests in vain, as the horses whisk him away and arrive seemingly instantaneously at the patient's door.
