"Three and a half hours to dinner time?" wailed Bobby. "Oh! That—is—tough!"

"That is, if we make the regular time," Bob said thoughtfully. "And right now, let me tell you, this train is just about crawling, and that's all. Humph! The soup sure will get cold in that dining car at Tonawanda, if it waits there to be attached to our train."

"Oh! Oh!" cried Bobby. "Don't let's think of it. I had no idea that snow could be so troublesome."

"Beautiful snow!" murmured Betty. "Say, Libbie. Recite that for us, will you? You know: the poetry about 'Beautiful Snow.' You or Timothy should remember it."

"Pah!" exclaimed Bobby, grumblingly. "I'll give you the proper version:

"Beautiful snow! If it chokes up this train, It certainly will give me a pain!"

"Goodness me, Bobby!" retorted her cousin, Libbie, "your versifying certainly gives me a pain."



CHAPTER XI

STALLED, AND WITHOUT A DOCTOR

The rapidity with which the storm had increased and the drifts had filled the cuts through which the rails were laid was something that none of the party bound for Mountain Camp had experienced. Unless Uncle Dick be excepted. As Betty said, Mr. Richard Gordon had been almost everywhere and had endured the most surprising experiences. That was something that helped to make him such a splendid guardian.

"Yes," he agreed, when Betty dragged him down the car aisle to the two sections which he had wisely abandoned entirely to his young charges, "we had considerable snow up there in the part of Canada where I have been this fall. Before I came down for the Christmas holidays there was about four feet of snow on the level in the woods and certain sections of the railroad up there had been entirely abandoned for the winter. Horse sleds and dog sleighs do all the transportation until the spring thaw."

"Oh, do you suppose," cried Libbie, big-eyed, "that we may be snowbound at Mountain Camp so that we cannot get back until spring?"

"Not a chance," replied Uncle Dick, laughing heartily. "But it does look as though we may have to lay by for a night, or perhaps a night and a day, before we can get on to Cliffdale, which is our station."

"In a hotel!" cried Betty. "Won't that be fun?"

"Perhaps not so much fun. Some of these country-town hotels up here in the woods are run in a more haphazard way than a lumber camp. And what you get to eat will come out of a can in all probability."

The boys groaned in unison at this, and even Betty looked woebegone.

"I wish you wouldn't talk about eating, Uncle Dick. Do you suppose we will catch up with that dining car?"

"I do not think we shall. But there is an eating room at the junction we are coming to. We can buy it out. I only hope there will be milk to be had for the little folks. There is at least one baby aboard. It's in the next car."

"But we'll get to this place we're going to by morning, shan't we?" cried Bobby, very much excited.

"We're two hours late already I understand," said Mr. Gordon. "We have little to fear, however I fancy if the storm does not hold up they will not try to push past the junction until morning. We've got to sleep in the car anyway; and if we are on short rations for a few hours it certainly will do you boys and girls little harm. At Cliffdale——"

"Oh, Uncle Dick!" suddenly exclaimed Betty, "that is where Mr. Bolter has sent that beautiful black horse that he bought in England."

"Oh, indeed? I heard of that mare. To Cliffdale? I believe there is a stockfarm there. It is some distance from my friend Canary's camp, however."

"Do you suppose that girl got there?" whispered Bobby to Betty.

"Even if she did, how disappointed she must be," Betty rejoined. "I am awfully sorry for Ida Bellethorne."

"I don't know," said Bobby slowly. "I've been thinking. Suppose she did find your beautiful locket and—and appropriate it for her own use," finished Bobby rather primly.

"You mean steal it," said Betty promptly. "No. I don't think she did. She didn't seem to be that sort of person. Do you know, the more I think of her the more I consider that Mrs. Staples would be capable of doing that."

"Oh, Betty! Finding and keeping your locket?"

Betty nodded with her lips pursed soberly. "I didn't like that woman," she said.

"Neither did I," cried Bobby, easily influenced by her friend's opinion. "I didn't like her a bit."

"But, of course, we don't know a thing about it," sighed Betty. "I do not suppose we should blame either of them, or anybody else. We have no evidence. I guess, Bobby, I am the only one to blame, after all."

"Well, don't mind, Betty dear," Bobby said comfortingly. "I believe the locket will turn up. I told Daddy and he will telephone to the stores once in a while and see if it has been found. And, of course, we have no particular reason to think that you dropped it in Mrs. Staples' shop."

"None at all," admitted Betty more cheerfully. "So I'll stop worrying right now. But I would like to know where Ida Bellethorne is in this blizzard."

"Girl or horse?" chuckled Bobby.

"Girl. I fancy that little cockney hostler, or whatever he is, will look out carefully for the mare. But who is there to care anything about poor Ida?"

Gradually even Betty and Bobby were convinced that there were several other matters to worry about that were connected with neither Ida Bellethorne the girl nor Ida Bellethorne the horse. The belated train finally got to the junction where there was an eating place. But another train had passed, going south, less than an hour before and the lunch counter had been swept almost bare.

Uncle Dick and Major Pater were old travelers, however; and they were first out of the train and bought up most of the food in sight. Others of the passengers purchased sandwiches and coffee and tea to consume at once. Uncle Dick and the military man swept the shelves of canned milk and fruit, prepared cocoa and other similar drinks, as well as all the loaves of bread in sight, a boiled ham complete, and several yards of frankfurters, or, as the Fairfields folks called them, "wienies."

"We know what Mrs. Eustice and Miss Prettyman would say to such provender," said Louise when the party, the boys helping, returned with the spoils of the lunch-room. "How about calories and dietetics, and all that?"

"We may be hungry enough before we see a regular meal in a dining-car or a hotel to forget all about such things," Uncle Dick said seriously. "There! We are starting already. And we're pushing straight into a blizzard that looks to me as though it would continue all night."

"Well, Uncle Dick," Betty said cheerfully, "we can go to bed and sleep and forget it. It will be all over by morning of course."

Uncle Dick made no rejoinder to this. They had a jolly lunch, getting hot water from the porter for their drink. Bob and the Tucker twins pretty nearly bought out the candy supply on the train, and the girls felt assured that they were completely safe from starvation as long as the caramels and marshmallows held out.

By nine o'clock, with the train pushing slowly on, the head locomotive aided by a pusher picked up at the junction, the berths were made up and everybody in the Pullman coach had retired.

Betty, as she lay in her upper berth with Libbie, heard the snow, or sleet, swishing against the side and roof of the car, and the sound lulled her to sleep. She slept like any other healthy girl and knew nothing of the night that passed. The lights were still burning when she awoke. Not a gleam of daylight came through the narrow ground-glass window at her head. And two other things impressed her unfavorably: The train was standing still and not a sound penetrated to the car from without.

Libbie was sound asleep and Betty crept out of the berth without awakening the plump girl. She got into her wrapper and slippers and stole along the aisle to the ladies' room. Nobody as yet seemed to have come from the berths.

She could not hear the wind or snow when she got into the dressing room. This convinced her at first that the storm was over. But she dropped one of the narrow windows at the top to see out, and found that a wall of hard-pack snow shrouded the window. She tried to break through this drift with her arm wrapped in a towel. But although she stood on a stool and thrust her arm out to her shoulder, her hand did not reach the open air!

"My goodness me!" gasped Betty Gordon. "We're stalled! We're snowbound! What shall we ever do if the snow doesn't melt pretty soon, or they don't come and dig us out?"

She washed in haste, and having brought her clothes with her, she dressed promptly. All the time she was considering what was to be done if, as it seemed, the train could not go on.

Just as she opened the door of the dressing room excited voices sounded at the end of the car. The conductor and the porter were talking loudly. The former suddenly shouted:

"Ladies and gentlemen! is there a doctor in this coach? We want a doctor right away! Day coach ahead! Child taken poison and must have a doctor."

A breathless gabble of voices assured him that there was no physician in the coach. He had already searched the other cars. There was no doctor on the train.

"And we're stalled here in this cut for nobody knows how long!" groaned the conductor. "That woman is crazy in the next car. Her two year old child got hold of some kind of poison and swallowed some of it. The child will die for sure!"

Betty was terribly shocked at this speech. She wriggled past the conductor and the troubled porter, and ran into the car ahead. At first glance she spied the little group of mother and children that was the center of excitement.



CHAPTER XII

THE TUNNEL

The baby was screaming, the little boy of four or five looked miserably unhappy, and the worn and meager-looking mother was plainly frightened out of her wits. She let the baby scream on the seat beside her while she held the little girl in her lap.

That youngster seemed to be the least disturbed of any of the party. She was a pretty child, and robust. She kicked vigorously against being held almost upside down by her mother (as though by that means the dose of poison could be coaxed out of the child) but she did not cry.

"The little dear!" cooed Betty, pushing through the ring of other passengers. "What has happened to her?"

"She'll be dead in five minutes," croaked a sour visaged woman who bent over the back of the seat to stare at the crying baby without making an effort to relieve the mother in any way.

"What is the poison?" demanded Betty excitedly.

"It—it's——I don't know what the doctor called it," wailed the poor mother. "I had it in my handbag with other drops. Nellie here is always playing with bottles. She will drink out of bottles, much as I can do or say."

Betty was sniffing—that may not be an elegant expression, but it is exactly what she did—and looking all about on the floor.

"Something's been spilled here," she said. "It's a funny odor. Seems to me I remember smelling it before."

"That's the poison," groaned the woman over the back of the seat. "Her ma knocked it out of the young one's hand. Too bad. She's a goner!"

This seemed to Betty very dreadful. She darted an angry glance at the woman. "A regular Mrs. Job's comforter, she is!" thought Betty.

But all the time she was looking about the floor of the car for the bottle. Finally she dropped to her knees and scrambled about among the boots of the passengers. She came up like a diver, with an object held high in one hand.

"Is this it?" she asked.

"That is the bottle, Miss," sobbed the mother. "My poor little Nellie! Isn't there a doctor, anywhere? They say milk is good for some kinds of poison, but I haven't any milk for baby even. That is what makes him cry so. Poor little Nellie!"

Betty had been staring at the label on the bottle. Now she smelled hard at the mouth of it She held the bottle before the woman's eyes.

"Are you sure this is the bottle the child drank out of?" she demanded.

"Yes, Miss. That is it. Poor little Nellie!"

"Why! can't you smell?" demanded Betty. "And can't you see? There is no skull and cross-bones on this label. And all that was in the bottle was sweet spirits of niter. I'm sure that won't do your Nellie any lasting harm."

The mother was thunderstruck for a moment—and speechless. The gloomy woman looking over the back of the seat drawled:

"Then it wasn't poison at all?"

"No," said Betty. "And I should think among you, you should have found it out!"

She was quite scornful of the near-by passengers. The mother let the struggling little girl slip out of her lap, fortunately feet first rather than head first, and grabbed up the screaming baby.

"Dear me! You naughty little thing, Nellie! You are always scaring me to death," she said scoldingly. "And if we don't come to some place where I can buy milk pretty soon and get it warmed, this child will burst his lungs crying."

Betty, however, considered that the baby was much too strong and vigorous to be in a starving state as yet. She wondered how the poor women expected to get milk with the train stalled in the snow. She had in her pocket some chocolate wafers and she pacified the two older children with these and then ran back to the sleeping car.

She was in season to head off a procession of excited Pullman passengers in all stages of undress starting for the day coach with everything in the line of antidote for poison that could be imagined and which they had discovered in their traveling bags.

"Baby's better. She wasn't poisoned at all," Betty told them. "But those children are going to be awfully hungry before long if we have to stay here. Do you know we're snowbound, girls?"

This last she confided to the three Littell girls.

"Won't they dig us out?" asked the practical Louise.

"What a lark!" exclaimed Bobby, clapping her hands.

"Just think! Buried in the snow! How wonderful!" murmured Libbie.

"Cheese!" exclaimed Tommy Tucker, overhearing this. "You'll think it's wonderful. The brakeman told me that the drivers were clogged at six o'clock and the wheels haven't turned since. We're completely buried in snow and it's still snowing. Head engine's an oil-burner and there is plenty of fuel; but there isn't a chance of our being dug out for days."

"How brutal you are," giggled Bobby, who could not be frightened by any misadventure. "How shall we live?"

"After we eat up the bread and ham we will draw lots and eat up each other," Bob observed soberly.

"But those little children can't eat each other," Betty declared with conviction. "Come on Bobby. You're dressed. Let's see what we can do for that poor mother and the babies."

The two girls had to confer with Uncle Dick first of all. He had charge of the supplies. Betty knew there was some way of mixing condensed milk with water and heating the mixture so that it would do very well at a pinch—the pinch of hunger!—for a nursing child. Uncle Dick supplied the canned milk and some other food for the older children, and Betty and Bobby carried these into the day coach where the little family had spent such an uncomfortable night and were likely to spend a very uncomfortable day as well.

For there was no chance of escaping from their present predicament—all the train crew said so—until plows and shovelers came to dig the train out of the cut.

Of course the conductors and the rest of the crew knew just where they were. Behind them about three miles was a small hamlet at which the train had not been scheduled to stop, and had not stopped. Had the train pulled down there the situation of the crew and passengers would have been much better. They would not have been stalled in this drifted cut.

Cliffdale, to which Uncle Dick and his party were bound, was twenty miles and more ahead. The roadbed was so blocked that it might be several days before the way would be opened to Cliffdale.

"The roads will be opened by the farmers and teams will get through the mountains before the railroad will be dug out," Mr. Gordon told the boys. "If we could get back to that station in the rear we might find conveyances that would take us on to Mountain Camp. If I had a pair of snowshoes I certainly could make it over the hills myself in a short time."

"You go ahead, Mr. Gordon," said Tommy Tucker, "and tell 'em we're coming."

"I'll have to dig out of here and get the webs on my feet first," replied Uncle Dick, laughing.

His speech put an idea in the head of the ingenious Tommy Tucker. While the girls were attending to the children in the car ahead, the twins and Bob and Timothy Derby went through the train to the very end. The observation platform was banked with snow, and the snow was packed pretty hard. But there were some tools at hand and the boys set to work with the two porters and a brakeman to punch a hole through the snowbank to the surface.

It was great sport, although the quartette from Salsette Academy enjoyed it more than the men did. It was fun for the boys and work for the men, and the latter would have given it up in despair if the younger diggers had not been so eagerly interested in the task.

They sloped the tunnel so that it was several yards long before it reached the surface. The snow underneath, they tramped hard; they battered their way through by pressing a good deal of the snow into solid walls on either side. When the roof at the end finally fell in on them, they found that it was still snowing steadily and the wind was pouring great sheets of it into the cut and heaping it yard upon yard over the roofs of the cars. They could barely see the top of the smokestack of the pusher a few feet away.

That locomotive had been abandoned by its crew when the train was stalled. Keeping the boiler of the head engine hot was sufficient to supply the cars with heat and hot water.

"Cricky!" cried Bob. "We've found the way out; but I guess even Uncle Dick wouldn't care to start out in this storm, snowshoes or not. Fellows, we're in a bad fix, just as sure as you live."

"All right," said Teddy Tucker. "Let's go back and get something to eat before somebody else gets ahead of us. I suppose those girls have given all the milk to those kids up front, and maybe the ham sandwiches too."

"Dear me!" sighed Timothy, "it is like being cast away on a desert island. We are Robinson Crusoes."

"And haven't got even a goat!" chuckled Tommy Tucker.



CHAPTER XIII

AN ALARM

Mr. Richard Gordon was not minded to allow the young folks to portion out the little store of food as they pleased. He and Major Pater, who had now joined the party from Fairfields quite as a matter of course, had considered the use of the supplies to the best advantage. There was not much else to eat on the train, for even the crew had devoured their lunches, and most trainmen when obliged to carry food at all are supplied with huge tin buckets that hold at least three "square meals."

"Though why meals should be 'square' I can't for the life of me see," Betty observed. "Why not 'round' meals? I am sure we manage to get around them when we eat them."

"Quite a philosopheress, aren't you?" joked Bob.

"These rations are not to be considered with philosophy," complained Bobby. "They are too frugal."

In truth, when the bread and meat and crackers and hot drink had been portioned to those needed food most, the amount each received was nothing to gorge upon.

"If it stops snowing—or as soon as it does," Bob declared, "we've got to get out and make our way back to that station the brakeman says is only three miles away."

"Uncle Dick won't let us try it, I am sure," sighed Betty. "How could we wade through such deep snow?"

"If you had helped dig that tunnel," said Teddy Tucker confidently, "you'd know that the snow is packed so hard you wouldn't sink in very deep in walking."

"But of course, you girls can't go," Tommy said. "We fellows will have to go for supplies."

The girls did not much like this statement. Betty and Bobby at least considered that they were quite as well able to endure the hardships of a tramp through the snow as the boys.

"I'd just like to see that tunnel, and see how hard it is snowing outside," said Betty privately to her chum.

"Let's go look," exclaimed Bobby, equally curious.

Libbie and Timothy had their heads together over a book. Louise and the boys were engaged socially with some of the other passengers in their coach. So Betty and Bobby were able to slip away, with their coats and caps, without being observed.

There were two Pullman coaches and but one day coach besides the express and baggage and mail cars to the train. The passengers in the day coach were confined to that or to the smoker's end of the baggage car ahead. The occupants of the Pullman coaches could roam through both as they pleased; and had the weather been fine it is certain that the young folks from Fairfields would have occupied the observation platform at the rear of the train a good part of the daytime.

They had been shut in by the storm the afternoon before, and now they were doubly shut in by the snow. The doors of the vestibules between the cars could not be opened, for the snow was banked up on both sides to the roofs. That tunnel the boys and train hands had made from the rear platform was the only means of egress for the passengers from the submerged train.

Betty and Bobby passed through the rear car and out upon the snow-banked platform. They saw that several people must have thrust themselves through the tunnel since the boys had made it. Probably these explorers had wished, like the two girls, to discover for themselves just what state the weather was in.

"Dear me!" gasped Bobby, "dare we poke through that hole? What do you think, Betty?"

"The snow is hard packed, just as the boys say. I guess we can risk it," declared the more daring Betty. "Anyway, I can go anywhere Bob Henderson can, my dear. I will not take a back seat for any boy."

"Hear! Hear!" chuckled Bobby. "Isn't that what they cry at political meetings? You have made a good speech, Bettykins. Now go ahead and do it."

"Go ahead and do what?"

"Lead the way through that chimney. My! I believe it has stopped snowing and the boys don't know it."

"Come on then and make sure," Betty cried, and began to scramble up the sloping tunnel on hands and knees.

Both girls were warmly dressed, booted, and mittened. A little snow would not hurt them—not even a great deal of snow. And that a great deal had fallen and blown into this railroad cut, Betty and Bobby soon realized when they had scrambled out through what the latter had called "the chimney."

Only a few big flakes drifted in the air, which was keen and biting. But the wind had ceased—at least, it did not blow here in the cut between the hills—and it seemed only an ordinary winter day to the two girls from the other side of the Potomac.

Forward they saw a thin stream of smoke rising into the air from the stack of the front locomotive. The fires in the pusher were banked. It was not an oil-burner, nor was it anywhere near as large a locomotive as the one that pulled the train.

Rearward they could scarcely mark the roadbed, so drifted over was it. Fences and other landmarks were completely buried. The bending telegraph poles, weighted by the pull of snow-laden wires, was all that marked the right of way through the glen.

"What a sight!" gasped Betty. "Oh, Bobby! did you ever see anything so glorious?"

"I never saw so much snow, if that is what you mean," admitted the Virginia girl. "And I am not sure that I really approve of it."

But Bobby laughed. She had to admit it was a great sight. It was now mid-afternoon and all they could see of the sun was a round, hazy ball behind the misty clouds, well down toward the western horizon which they could see through the mouth of this cut, or valley between the hills. At first they beheld not a moving object on the white waste.

"It is almost solemn," pursued Betty, who possessed a keen delight in all manifestations of nature.

"It looks mighty solemn, I admit," agreed Bobby. "Especially when you remember that anything to eat is three miles away and the drifts are nobody knows how many feet deep."

Betty laughed. She was about to say something cheerful in reply when a sudden sound smote upon their ears—a sound that startled the two girls. Somewhere from over the verge of the high bank of the cut on their left hand sounded a long-drawn and perfectly blood-curdling howl!

"For goodness' sake!" gasped Bobby, grabbing her friend by the arm. "What sort of creature is that? Hear it?"

"Of course I hear it," replied Betty, rather sharply. "Do you think I am deaf?"

Only a very deaf person could have missed hearing that mournful howl. It drew nearer.

"Is it a dog?" asked Bobby, almost in a whisper, as for a third time the howl sounded.

"A dog barks, doesn't it? That doesn't sound like a dog, Bobby," said Betty. "I heard one out West. I do believe it is one!"

"One what?" cried Bobby, almost shaking her in alarm and impatience.

"A wolf. It sounds just like a wolf. Oh, Bobby! suppose there should be a pack of wolves in these hills and that they should attack this train?"

"Wolves!" shrieked Bobby. "Wolves! Then me for in-doors! I am not going to stay here and be eaten up by wolves."

As she turned to dive into the tunnel there was a sharper and more eager yelp, and a shaggy animal came to the edge of the bluff to their left and, without stopping an instant, plunged down through the drifts toward the two girls where they stood on the hard-packed snow at the mouth of the tunnel.

"It is a wolf!" wailed Bobby, and immediately disappeared, head first, down the hole in the snow drift.



CHAPTER XIV

THE MOUNTAIN HUT

If Bobby had not gone first and had not stuck half way down the hole with her feet kicking madly just at the mouth of the tunnel, without doubt Betty Gordon would have been driven by her own fears back into the Pullman coach.

That shaggy beast diving from the top of the embankment, plunging, yelping and whining, through the softer drifts of snow, frightened Betty just as much as it had Bobby Littell. The latter had got away with a flying start, however, and her writhing body plugged the only means of escape. So Betty really had to face the approaching terror.

"Oh! Oh!" cried Betty, turning from the approaching beast in despair. "Hurry! Hurry, Bobby Littell! Do you want me to be eaten up?"

But Bobby had somehow cramped herself in the winding passage through the snow, and her voice was muffled as she too cried for help.

However, Bobby's demands for assistance were much more likely to bring it than the cries of the girl outside. The porter heard Bobby first, and when he opened the door of the coach several men who were near heard the girl.

"Help! Help! A wolf is eating her!" shrieked the frightened Bobby.

"Ma soul an' body! He must be a-chawin' her legs off!" cried the darkey and he seized Bobby by the wrists, threw himself backward, and the girl came out of the tunnel like an aggravating cork out of a bottle.

"What's this?" demanded Mr. Richard Gordon, who happened to be coming back to the end of the train to look for his niece and her chum.

"Oh, Mr. Gordon!" sputtered Bobby, scrambling up, "it's got her! A wolf! It's got Betty!"

"A wolf?" repeated Uncle Dick. "I didn't know there were any wolves left in this part of the country."

Major Pater was with him. Mr. Gordon grabbed the latter's walking stick and went up that tunnel a good deal quicker than Bobby had come down it. And when he got to the surface he found his niece, laughing and crying at once, and almost smothered by the joyful embraces of a big Newfoundland dog!

"A wolf indeed!" cried Mr. Gordon, but beating off the animal good-naturedly. "He must be a friend of yours, Betty."

"Oh, dear me, he did scare us so!" Betty rejoined, getting up out of the drift, trying to brush off her coat, and petting the exuberant dog at the same time. "But it is a dear—and its master must be somewhere about, don't you think, Uncle Dick?"

Its master was, for the next moment he appeared at the top of the bank down which the "wolf" had wallowed. He hailed Uncle Dick and Betty with a great, jovial shout and plunged down the slope himself. He was a young man on snowshoes, and he proved to be a telegraph operator at that station three miles south.

"Wires are so clogged we can't get messages through. But we knew that Number Forty was stalled about here. Going to be a job to dig her out. I've got a message for the conductor," he said when he reached the top of the drift that was heaped over the train.

"Wasn't it a hard task to get here?" Mr. Gordon asked.

"Not so bad. My folks live right over the ridge there, about half a mile away. I just came from the house with the dog. Down, Nero! Behave yourself!"

"We are going to be hungry here pretty soon," suggested Mr. Gordon.

"There will be a pung come up from the station with grub enough before night. Furnished by the company. That is what I have come to see the conductor about."

"I tell you what," said Betty's uncle, who was nothing if not quick in thinking. "My party were bound for Cliffdale."

"That's not very far away. But I doubt if the train gets there this week."

"Bad outlook for us. We are going to Mountain Camp—Mr. Canary's place."

"I know that place," said the telegraph operator. "There is an easy road to it from our farm through the hills. Get there quicker than you can by the way of Cliffdale. I believe my father could drive you up there to-morrow."

"In a sleigh?" cried Betty delightedly. "What fun!"

"In a pung. With four of our horses. They'd break the road all right. Ought to start right early in the morning, though."

"Do you suppose you could get us over to your house to-night?" asked Mr. Gordon quickly. "There are a good many of us——"

"How many in the party?" asked the young man. "My name's Jaroth—Fred Jaroth."

Mr. Gordon handed him his card and said:

"There are four girls, four boys, and myself. Quite a party."

"That is all right, Mr. Gordon," said Fred Jaroth cheerfully. "We often put up thirty people in the summer. We've a great ranch of a house. And I can help you up the bank yonder and beat you a path through the woods to the main road. Nothing simpler. Your trunks will get to Cliffdale sometime and you can carry your hand baggage."

"Not many trunks, thank goodness," replied Mr. Gordon. "What do you think, Betty? Does it sound good?"

"Heavenly!" declared his niece.

Just then a brakeman came up through the tunnel to find out if the wolf had eaten both the gentleman and his niece, and the telegraph operator went down, feet first, to find the conductor and deliver his message.

"Then the idea of going on to Mountain Camp by sledge suits you, does it, young lady?" asked Mr. Gordon of Betty.

"They will all be delighted. You know they will, Uncle. What sport!"

The suggestion of the telegraph operator did seem quite inspired. Mr. Gordon and Betty reentered the train to impart the decision to the others, and, as Betty had claimed, her young friends were both excited and delighted by the prospect.

In half an hour the party was off, Betty and her friends bundled up and carrying their bags while Mr. Gordon followed and Fred Jaroth led the way on his snowshoes and carrying two suitcases. He said they helped balance him and made the track through the snow firmer. As for Nero, he cavorted like a wild dog, and that, Bobby said, proved he was a wolf!

Once at the top of the bank they found it rather easy following Jaroth through the woods. And when they reached the road—or the place where the highway would have been if the snow had not drifted over fences and all—they met the party from the station bringing up food and other comforts for the snowbound passengers. As the snow had really stopped falling it was expected that the plow would be along sometime the next day and then the train would be pulled back to the junction.

"But if this man has a roomy sled and good horses we shall not be cheated out of our visit to Mountain Camp," Mr. Gordon said cheerfully.

The old farmhouse when they reached it certainly looked big enough to accommodate them all. There was a wing thrown out on either side; but those wings were for use only in the summer. There were beds enough and to spare in the main part of the house.

When they sat down to Mrs. Jaroth's supper table Bob declared that quite evidently famine had not reached this retired spot. The platters were heaped with fried ham and fried eggs and sausages and other staple articles. These and the hot biscuit disappeared like snow before a hot sun in April.

Altogether it was a joyous evening that they spent at the Jaroth house. Yet as Betty and Bobby cuddled up together in the bed which they shared, Betty expressed a certain fear which had been bothering her for some time.

"I wonder where she is, Bobby?" Betty said thoughtfully.

"Where who is?" demanded her chum sleepily.

"That girl. Ida Bellethorne. If she came up here on a wild goose chase after her aunt, and found only a horse, what will become of her?"

"I haven't the least idea," confessed Bobby.

"Did she return before this blizzard set in, or is she still up here in the woods? And what will become of her?"

"Gracious!" exclaimed the sleepy Bobby, "let's go to sleep and think about Ida Bellethorne to-morrow."

"And I wonder if it is possible that she can know anything about my locket," was another murmured question of Betty's. But Bobby had gone fast asleep then and did not answer.

Under the radiance of the big oil lamp hanging above the kitchen table, the table itself covered with an old-fashioned red and white checked cloth, the young folks bound for Mountain Camp ate breakfast. And such a breakfast!

Buckwheat cakes, each as big as the plate itself with "oodles of butter and real maple syrup," to quote Bob.

"We don't even get as good as this at Salsette," said Tommy Tucker grimly. "Oh, cracky!"

"I want to know!" gibed his twin, borrowing a phrase he had heard New England Libbie use on one occasion. "If Major Pater could see us now!"

Libbie and Timothy forgot to quote poetry. The fact was, as Bobby pointed out, buckwheat cakes like those were poems in themselves.

"And when one's mouth is full of such poems, mere printed verses lack value."

Romantic as she was, Libbie admitted the truth of her cousin's remark.

A chime of bells at the door hastened the completion of the meal. The boys might have sat there longer and, like boa-constrictors, gorged themselves into lethargy.

However, adventure was ahead and the sound of the sledge bells excited the young people. They got on their coats and caps and furs and mittens and trooped out to the "pung," as the elder Jaroth called the low, deep, straw-filled sledge to which he had attached four strong farm horses.

There were no seats. It would be much more comfortable sitting in the straw, and much warmer. For although the storm had entirely passed the cold was intense. It nipped every exposed feature, and their breath hung like hoar-frost before them when they laughed and talked.

During the night something had been done to break out the road. Mr. Jaroth's horses managed to trample the drifts into something like a hubbly path for the broad sled-runners to slip oven They went on, almost always mounting a grade, for four hours before they came to a human habitation.

The driver pointed his whipstock to a black speck before them and higher up the hill which was sharply defined against the background of pure white.

"Bill Kedders' hut," he said to Mr. Gordon. "'Tain't likely he's there this time o' year. Usually he and his wife go to Cliffdale to spend the winter with their married daughter."

"Just the same," cried Bob suddenly, "there's smoke coming out of that chimney. Don't you see it, Uncle Dick?"

"The boy's right!" ejaculated Jaroth, with sudden anxiety. "It can't be that Bill and his woman were caught by this blizzard. He's as knowing about weather signs as an old bear, Bill is. And you can bet every bear in these woods is holed up till spring."

He even urged the plodding horses to a faster pace. The hut, buried in the snow to a point far above its eaves, was built against a steep hillside at the edge of the wood, with the drifted road passing directly before its door. When the pung drew up before it and the horses stopped with a sudden shower of tinkling bell-notes, Mr. Jaroth shouted:

"Hey, Bill! Hey, Bill Kedders!"

There was no direct reply to this hail. But as they listened for a reply there was not one of the party that did not distinguish quite clearly the sound of weeping from inside the mountain hut.



CHAPTER XV

THE LOST GIRL

"That ain't Bill!" exclaimed Jaroth. "That's as sure as you're a foot high. Nor yet it ain't his wife. If either one of them has cried since they were put into short clothes I miss my guess. Huh!"

He hesitated, standing in the snow half way between the pung and the snow-smothered door of the hut. Sheltered as it had been by the hill and by the woods, the hut was not masked so much by the drifted snow on its front. They could see the upper part of the door-casing.

"By gravy!" ejaculated Mr. Jaroth, "it don't sound human. I can't make it out. Funny things they say happen up here in these woods. I wouldn't be a mite surprised if that crying—or——"

He hesitated while the boys and girls, and even Mr. Gordon, stared amazedly at him.

"Who do you think it is?" asked Uncle Dick finally.

"Well, it ain't Bill," grumbled Jaroth.

The sobbing continued. So engaged was the person weeping in the sorrow that convulsed him, or her, that the jingling of the bells as the horses shook their heads or the voices of those in the pung did not attract attention.

Jaroth stood in the snow and neither advanced nor retreated. It really did seem as though he was afraid to approach nearer to the hut on the mountain-side!

"That is a girl or a woman in there," Bob declared.

"Huh!" exclaimed Bobby sharply. "It might be a boy. Boys cry sometimes."

"Really?" said Timothy. "But you never read of crying boys except in humorous verses. They are not supposed to cry."

"Well," said Betty, suddenly hopping out of the sleigh, "we'll never find out whether it is a girl or a boy if we wait for Mr. Jaroth, it seems."

She started for the door of the hut. Bob hopped out after her in a hurry. And he took with him the snow-shovel Jaroth had brought along to use in clearing the drifts away if they chanced to get stuck.

"You'd better look out," said Jaroth, still standing undecided in the snow.

"For what?" asked Bob, hurrying to get before Betty.

"That crying don't sound natural. Might he a ha'nt. Can't tell."

"Fancy!" whispered Betty in glee. "A great big man like him afraid of a ghost—and there isn't such a thing!"

"Don't need to be if he is afraid of it," returned Bob in the same low tone. "You can be afraid of any fancy if you want to. It doesn't need to exist. I guess most fears are of things that don't really exist Come on, now. Let me shovel this drift away."

He set to work vigorously on the snow heap before the door. Mr. Gordon, seeing that everything possible was being done, let the young people go ahead without interference. In two minutes they could see the frozen latch-string that was hanging out. Whoever was in the hut had not taken the precaution to pull in the leather thong.

"Go ahead, Betty," said Bob finally. "You push open the door. I'll stand here ready to beat 'em down with the shovel if they start after you."

"Guess you think it isn't a girl, then," chuckled Betty, as she pulled the string and heard the bar inside click as it was drawn out of the slot.

With the shovel Bob pushed the door inward. The cabin would have been quite dark had it not been for a little fire crackling on the hearth. Over this a figure stooped—huddled, it seemed, for warmth. The room was almost bare.

"Why, you poor thing!" Betty cried, running into the hut. "Are you here all alone?"

She had seen instantly that it was a girl. And evidently the stranger was in much misery. But at Betty's cry she started up from the hearth and whirled about in both fear and surprise.

Her hair was disarranged, and there was a great deal of it. Her face was swollen with weeping, and she was all but blinded by her tears. At Betty's sympathetic tone and words she burst out crying again. Betty gathered her right into her arms—or, as much of her as she could enfold, for the other girl was bigger than Betty in every way.

"You?" gasped the crying girl. "How—how did you come up here? And in all this snow? Oh, this is a wilderness—a wilderness! How do people ever live here, even in the summer? It is dreadful—dreadful! And I thought I should freeze."

"Ida Bellethorne!" gasped Betty. "Who would ever have expected to find you here?"

"I know I haven't any more business here than I have in the moon," said the English girl. "I—I wish I'd never left Mrs. Staples."

"Mrs. Staples told us you had come up this way," Betty said.

Immediately the other girl jerked away from her, threw back her damp hair, and stared, startled, at Betty.

"Then you—you found out? You know——"

"My poor girl!" interrupted Betty, quite misunderstanding Ida's look, "I know all about your coming up here to find your aunt. And that was foolish, for the notice you saw in the paper was about Mr. Bolter's black mare."

"Mr. Bolter's mare?" repeated Ida.

"Now, tell me!" urged the excited Betty. "Didn't you come to Cliffdale to look for your aunt?"

"Yes. That I did. But she isn't up here at all."

By this time Uncle Dick and the others were gathered about the door of the hut. Jaroth, with a glance now and then at his horses, had even stepped inside.

"By gravy!" ejaculated the man, "this here's a pretty to-do. What you been doing to Bill Kedders' chattels, girl?"

"I—I burned them. I had to, to keep warm," answered Ida Bellethorne haltingly. "I burned the table and the chairs and the boxes and then pulled down the berths and burned them. If you hadn't come I don't know what I should have done for a fire."

"By gravy! Burned down the shack itself to keep you warm, I reckon!" chuckled Jaroth. "Well, we'd better take this girl along with us, hadn't we, Mr. Gordon? She'll set fire to the timber next, if we don't, after she's used up the shack."

"We most surely will take her along to Mountain Camp," declared Betty's uncle. "But what puzzles me, is how she ever got here to this, lonely place."

"I was trying to find the Candace Farm," choked Ida Bellethorne.

"I want to know!" said Jaroth. "That's the stockfarm where they pasture so many sportin' hosses. Candace, he makes a good thing out of it. But it's eight miles from here and not in the direction we're going, Mr. Gordon."

"We will take her along to Mountain Camp," said Uncle Dick. "One more will not scare Mrs. Canary, I am sure."

Ida brought a good-sized suitcase out of the hut with her. She had evidently tried to walk from Cliffdale to the stockfarm, carrying that weight. The girls were buzzing over the appearance of the stranger and the boys stared.

"Oh, Betty!" whispered Bobby Littell, "is she Ida Bellethorne?"

"One of them," rejoined Betty promptly.

"Then do you suppose she has your locket?" ventured Bobby.

To tell the truth, Betty had not once thought of that!



CHAPTER XVI

THE CAMP ON THE OVERLOOK

Mountain Camp was rightly named, for it was built on the side of one mountain and was facing another. Between the two eminences was a lake at least five miles long and almost as broad. The wind had blown so hard during the blizzard that the snow had not piled upon the ice at all, although it was heaped man-high along the edges. The pool of blue ice stretched away from before Mountain Camp like a huge sheet of plate glass.

The two storied, rambling house, built of rough logs on the outside, stood on a plateau called the Overlook forty feet above the surface of the lake. Indeed the spot did overlook the whole high valley.

The hills sloped down from this height in easy descents to the plains. Woods masked every topographical contour of the surrounding country. Such woods as Betty Gordon and her friends had never seen before.

"Virginia forests are not like this," confessed Louise Littell. "The pines are never so tall and there is not so much hardwood. Dear me! see that dead pine across the lake. It almost seems to touch the sky, it is so tall."

This talk took place the next morning when they had all rested and, like all healthy young things, were eager for adventure. They had been welcomed by Mr. and Mrs. Canary in a way that put the most bashful at ease.

Even Ida Bellethorne had soon recovered from that sense of strangeness that had at first overpowered her. The girls had been able to help her out a little in the matter of dress. She appeared at the dinner table quite as one of themselves. Betty would not hear of Ida's withdrawing from the general company, and for a particular reason.

In truth, Betty felt a little condemned. She had considered a suspicion of Ida's honesty, and afterward she knew it could not be so! The English girl had no appearance of a dishonest person. Betty saw that Uncle Dick was favorably disposed toward Ida. If he did not consider her all right he surely would not have introduced her to Mr. and Mrs. Canary as one of his party.

Nor did Uncle Dick allow Ida to tell her story the evening they arrived at the camp on the Overlook. "To-morrow will do for that," he had said.

At breakfast time there were so many plans for exciting adventure discussed that Betty surely would have forgotten all about Ida Bellethorne's expected explanation had it not been for the lost locket. The possibility that Ida knew something about it had so impressed Betty that nothing else held her interest for long.

Every one had brought skates from Fairfields, and the great expanse of blue ice—no ice is so blue as that of a mountain lake—was unmarked. Naturally skating was the very first pleasure that beckoned.

"Oh, I'm just crazy to get on skates!" cried Bobby.

"I think I'll be glad to do some skating myself," came from Libbie, who had been reading a book even before breakfast.

"What do you say to a race on skates?" came from Tommy Tucker.

"I think we had better get used to skating up here before we talk about a race," said Bob. "This ice looks tremendously hard and slippery. You won't be able to do much on your skates unless they are extra sharp."

"Oh, I had 'em sharpened."

"Don't forget to wrap up well," admonished Mrs. Canary. "Sometimes it gets pretty cold and windy."

"Not to say anything about its being cold already," answered Bobby. "My, but the wind goes right through a person up here!"

While the other seven ran off for skates and wraps, Betty nodded to Uncle Dick and then, tucking her arm through that of Ida Bellethorne, urged her to follow Mr. Gordon from the breakfast room to a little study, or "den," that was possibly Mr. Canary's own.

"Now, girls," said Uncle Dick in his quiet, pleasant way and smiling with equal kindness upon his niece and the English girl, "let us get comfortable and open our hearts to each other. I think you know, Ida, that Betty and I are immensely interested in your story and we are hungry for the details. But not altogether out of mere curiosity. We hope to give you aid in some way to make your situation better. Understand?"

"Oh, Mr. Gordon, I quite understand that," said the English girl seriously and without smiling. "I never saw such friendly people as you are. And you both strangers to me! If I were at home I couldn't find better friends, I am sure."

"That's fine!" declared Uncle Dick. "It is exactly the way I want you to feel. Betty and I are interested. Now suppose you sit down and tell us all about it."

"Where shall I begin?" murmured the girl thoughtfully, hesitating.

"If I were you," returned Uncle Dick, with a smile, "I would begin at the beginning."

"Oh, but that's so very far back!"

"Never mind that. One of the most foolish mistakes which I see in educational methods is to give the children lessons in modern history without any reference to ancient history which comes to them in higher grades. Ancient history should be gone into first. Suppose, Ida, you begin with ancient history."

"Before Ida Bellethorne was born, do you mean?" asked the English girl doubtfully.

"Which Ida Bellethorne do you mean?" asked Mr. Gordon, while Betty stared.

"I was thinking of my beautiful black mare. The darling! She is seven years old now, Mr. Gordon; but I think that in those seven years enough has happened to me to make me feel three times seven years old."

"Go ahead, Ida," said the gentleman cheerfully. "Tell it in your own way."

Thus encouraged, the girl began, and she did tell it in her own way. But it was not a brief way, and both Mr. Gordon and Betty asked questions and that, too, increased the difficulty of Ida's telling her story.

She had been the only living child of Gwynne Bellethorne, who had been a horse breeder and sometimes a turfman in one of the lower English counties. She had been motherless since her third birthday. Her only living relative was her father's sister, likewise Ida Bellethorne, who had been estranged from her brother for several years and had made her own way on the continent and later in America on the concert stage.

Ida, the present Ida, remembered seeing her aunt but once. She had come to Bellethorne Park the very week the black mare was foaled. When they all went out to see the little, awkward, kicking colt in the big box stall, separated from its whinnying mother by a strong barred fence, the owner of the stables had laughingly named the filly after his sister.

"But," Ida told them, "father told Aunt Ida that the filly was to be my property. He had, I think, suffered many losses even then. He made a bill of sale, or something, making the filly over to me; but I was a minor, and after father died my guardian had that bill of sale. He showed it to me once. I don't see how Mr. Bolter could have bought my lovely mare when I got none of the money for her."

This was not, however, sticking to the main thread of the story. Ida knew that although her aunt had come to the Park in amity, there was a quarrel between her father and aunt before the haughty and beautiful concert singer went away, never more to appear at Bellethorne, not even to attend her brother's funeral.

Before that sad happening the mare, Ida Bellethorne, had come to full growth and as a three-year-old had made an astonishing record on the English race tracks. The year Mr. Bellethorne died he had planned to ship her to France for the Grand Prix. Her name was in the mouths of every sportsman in England and her fame had spread to the United States.

The death of her father had signaled the breaking up of her home and the severing of all home ties for Ida. Like many men of his class, Mr. Bellethorne had had no close friends. At least, no honorable friends. The man he had chosen as the administrator of his wrecked estate and the guardian of his unfortunate daughter, Ida felt sure had been dishonorable.

There seemed nothing left for Ida when the estate was "settled." One day Ida Bellethorne, the mare, had disappeared, and Ida the girl could learn nothing about her or what had been done with her. At that she had run away from her guardian, had made her way to Liverpool, had taken service with an American family sailing for the United States, and so had reached New York.

"I found a letter addressed to Aunt Ida after my father died," explained the girl, choking back a sob. "On the envelope in pencil father had written to me to find Aunt Ida and give it to her. He hoped she would forgive him and take some interest in me. I've got that letter safe in here." She touched the belt that held her blouse down so snugly. "I hope I'll find Aunt Ida and be able to give her the letter. I remember her as a most beautiful, tall woman. I loved her on sight. But, I don't know——"

"Cheer up!" exclaimed Mr. Gordon, beamingly. "We'll find her. I take it upon myself to say that Betty and I will find her for you. Sha'n't we, Betty?"

"Indeed we will. If she is singing in this country of course it will be comparatively easy to find her."

"Do you think so?" asked Ida Bellethorne doubtfully. "I have not found it so, and I have been searching for her for three months now. This is such a big country! I never imagined it so big until I began to look for Aunt Ida. It seems like looking for a needle in a haystack."



CHAPTER XVII

OFF ON SNOWSHOES

Mr. Gordon encouraged the English girl at this point in her story by assuring her that he would, before returning to Canada, put the matter in the hands of his lawyers and have the search for the elder Ida Bellethorne conducted in a more businesslike way.

"How did you expect to find your aunt," he asked, "when you first landed in New York?"

"I knew of a musical journal published there which I believed kept track of people who sang. I went to that office. The last they knew of my aunt she was booked to sing at a concert in Washington," Ida said sadly. "The date was the very day I called at the office. I hurried to buy a ticket to Washington. But the distance was so great that when my train got into Washington the concert was over and I could do nothing more until the next day."

"And then?" asked Uncle Dick.

"She had gone again. All the company had gone and I could find nobody who knew anything about her. I—I didn't have much money left," confessed the girl. "And things do cost so much here in your country. I was frightened. I walked about to find a cheap lodging and reached that street in Georgetown where Mrs. Staples has her shop."

"I see," commented Uncle Dick.

"So I asked Mrs. Staples. She was English too, and she offered me lodgings and a chance to serve in her shop. I took it. What else could I do?"

"You are a plucky girl, I must say. Don't you think so. Betty?" said Uncle Dick.

"I think she is quite wonderful!" cried his niece. "And think of her making those blouses so beautifully! You know, Ida, Bobby bought the blue one of Mrs. Staples."

"I am glad, if you like them," said the other girl, blushing faintly. "I had hard work to persuade Mrs. Staples to pay for that one on the chance of your coming back for it."

"Well," interposed Uncle Dick, "tell us the rest. You thought you heard of your Aunt Ida up here, in the mountains?"

"Yes, Mr. Gordon," said Ida. "I read it in the paper. But the notice must have referred to my dear little mare. I never dreamed she had been sent over here. I never dreamed of it!"

"No?"

"Of course I didn't! And when I got to Cliffdale there was nobody who had ever heard of my aunt. There are two hotels. One of them is closed at this time of year. At the other there was no such guest."

"Dear me! How disappointed you must have felt," murmured Betty.

"You can't imagine! But in talking with the clerk at the hotel I got news of my little darling."

"Meaning the mare, of course?" suggested Uncle Dick.

"Yes. She had arrived the night before and had been taken directly to Candace Farm. The clerk told me how to get there. I did not feel that I could afford to hire anybody to take me there. And I knew nobody. So I set out to walk day before yesterday morning."

"Before it began to snow?" asked Betty.

"Yes, Miss Gordon."

"Oh, please," cried Betty, "call me Betty. I'm not old enough to be Miss Gordon. To a girl, anyway," she added. "With a strange boy it would be different."

The English girl consented, and then went on with her story.

"It was cloudy but I did not know anything about such storms as you have here. Oh, dear me, how it snowed and blew! I got to that little house and I could open the door. If I had had to go many yards farther I would have fallen down and been covered by the snow."

"You poor dear!" murmured Betty, putting an arm around the other girl.

Ida gave her a tearful smile, and Betty kissed her. And then the latter suddenly remembered again her lost locket. She gave a little jump in her chair. But she did not speak of it.

Not for a moment did she believe Ida Bellethorne would be guilty of stealing her trinket. Uncle Dick evidently did not think of that possibility, either. Could Betty suggest such a matter when already Ida was in so much trouble? At least, she would wait and see what came of it. So she hugged Ida more closely and said:

"Go on. What else?"

"Not much else, Betty," said the English girl, wiping her eyes again and smiling. "I just stayed there in that house until you came along and saved me. There was nothing to burn but the furniture in the house, and I burned it. I suppose the poor man who owns it will want to be paid. Oh, dear!"

"I wouldn't worry about that," said Mr. Gordon, cheerfully. "You seem to have come through a good deal. I'd take it easy now. Mrs. Canary and the girls are glad to have you here. When we go back to town we will take you with us and see what can be done."

"Thank you, Mr. Gordon. You are very kind. I should like to know about my little mare. She is a darling! How this Mr. Bolter came to get her——"

"Oh, Ida!" cried Betty, breaking in suddenly, "do you know a little man, a crooked little man, named Hunchie Slattery?"

"My goodness, Betty! Of course I remember Hunchie. He worked in our stables."

"He is with Ida Bellethorne, your pretty mare. He takes care of her. I talked with him at Mr. Bolter's farm in Virginia. The mare has a cough, and she was sent up here to get well. And I heard Mr. Bolter himself tell Hunchie Slattery that he was to go with her."

"Dear me, Betty! if I could find Hunchie, too, I'd feel better. He might be able to tell me how it came that my mare was taken away and sold. She really did belong to me, Mr. Gordon. Mr. Jackwood, father's administrator and my guardian, showed me the bill of sale making me Ida's owner. And even if I was a minor, wouldn't that be a legal transfer paper?"

"I am not sure of the English law, my dear. But it seems to me it would be in this country. At any rate, that will be another thing to consult my lawyers about. I understand Bolter paid somewhere near twenty thousand dollars for the mare. It would be quite a fortune for you, Ida."

"Indeed it would. And the mare is worth all of four thousand pounds, I know. Father always said there was no better mare in all England than Ida Bellethorne, and Aunt Ida might be proud to have such a horse named after her."

"We are not far from the Candace Farm and perhaps we can get over there before we leave Mountain Camp," Mr. Gordon said kindly. "Then you can see your horse and the man from home. I will get a statement from this jockey, or hostler, or whatever he is, and it may aid my lawyers in their search for the facts regarding the sale of the mare to Mr. Bolter."

"Thank you very kindly, Mr. Gordon."

The conference broke up and Betty ran out to join her mates on the lake. Ida could not skate. And, anyway, she preferred to sit indoors with Mrs. Canary. Ida had the silk for another sweater in her bag, and that very hour she began to knit an over-blouse for Libbie, who had expressed a desire to possess one like those Betty and Bobby had bought.

The skating was fine, but the wind had risen again and this time it was a warm wind. The snow grew soft on the surface, and when the party came up the bluff for luncheon it was not easy to walk and they sank deeply into the snow.

"This is a weather breeder," said Mr. Canary, standing on the porch to greet them. "I fear you young folks have come to Mountain Camp at the beginning of the roughest part of the winter."

"Don't apologize for your weather, Jack," laughed Uncle Dick. "If it grows too boisterous or unpleasant outside, these young people must find their fun indoors."

And this is what they did for the next two days. The temperature moderated a good deal, and then it rained. Not a hard downpour, but a drifting "Scotch mist" that settled the snowdrifts and finally left them saturated with water.

Then back came the frost—sharp, snappy and robust. The air cleared like magic. The sun shone out of a perfectly clear sky. Just to put one's head out of the door make the blood tingle.

Meanwhile both the girls and boys had found plenty of interesting things to do indoors, as Uncle Dick had prophesied. Especially the boys. Under the teaching of Uncle Dick and Mr. Canary they had learned to string snowshoes. Mr. Canary had the frames and the thongs of which the webs are woven. Even Timothy neglected the library to engage in this fascinating work.

Of course, the girls must have webs as well. Betty and Bobby were particularly eager to learn to walk on snowshoes and, as Bob Henderson said, they "pestered" the boys until sufficient pairs of webs were made to enable the entire party to try walking on them when the time was ripe.

On the third morning, just at dawn, there was a heavy snow squall for an hour. It left about four inches of downy snow upon the hard-packed and slippery surface of the drifts.

"This is an ideal condition," said Mr. Gordon with enthusiasm. "My feet itch to be off on the webs myself. After breakfast we will try them out. Now remember the rules I have been telling you, and see how well you can all learn to shuffle over this snow."

Thoughtful Bob had strung an extra pair of shoes for Ida. He knew that Betty did not want the English girl left out of their good times. And all the crowd liked Ida. Although she was in the main a very quiet girl, as one grew to know her she proved to possess charming qualities both of mind and heart.

Ida was not as warmly dressed for venturing into the open as the other girls. But Mrs. Canary, one of the kindest souls in the world, mended this defect. She furnished Ida with a fur coat and gloves that secured her from frostbite.

The whole party turned out gaily. Having been confined to the house for almost forty-eight hours, they were as full of life as colts. But in a few minutes the nine of them were on snowshoes and watched and instructed by Uncle Dick were learning their first lesson in the rather ticklish art of scuffling over the soft snow without tripping and plunging headlong into it.

Not that there were not many laughable accidents. The capers both boys and girls involuntarily cut led to shouts of laughter, and sometimes to a little pain. For the frozen crust underneath the light surface snow offered a rather hard foundation when one fell flat.

The necessary falls incident to learning the right trick of handling one's self on snowshoes soon cured the first enthusiasm of several of the party. Louise, for instance, found it too strenuous for her liking. And Timothy got a bump on the back of his head that no phrenologist could have easily described.

The second day, however, Betty, Bobby and Ida, with Bob and Tommy Tucker, were just as enthusiastic on the subject of snowshoeing as at first. While the others swept off a part of the lake just below the Outlook, the snowshoeing party set off on their first real hike through the woods; and that hike led to an unexpected adventure.



CHAPTER XVIII

GREAT EXCITEMENT

Mr. Richard Gordon was, as Betty and Bob often declared, the very best uncle that ever lived! One good thing about him they thought was that he never "fussed."

"He isn't always wondering what you are going to do next and telling you not to," explained Bob to Ida Bellethorne as the party started out from Mountain Camp. "Not like a woman, oh, no!"

"Hush, bad boy!" cried Bobby. "What do you mean, throwing slurs at women?"

"You know even if Mrs. Canary had seen us start off she would have given us a dozen orders before we got out of earshot. And she's a mighty nice woman, too. Almost as nice as your mother, Bobby," finished Bob.

"Bob doesn't like chaperons," giggled Betty.

"Nor me," said Tommy Tucker, sticking close to Bobby Littell as he always did when Roberta would let him. "Uncle Dick suits me as a chaperon every time."

Uncle Dick had let the party troop away on their snowshoes without advising them when to return or asking where they were going, and presently Betty and Bob formed a sudden plan about their hike.

From one of the men working about the camp Bob had got directions regarding the nearest way to Candace Farm. Ida longed to go there. It was but seven miles away in a direct line, and now, when Betty spoke of going there, Bob said that, with the aid of his compass, he knew he could find it without difficulty.

"We didn't mention it to Uncle Dick, but he won't be bothered about it," said Bob. "We've got all day. We can tell him where we have been when we get back, which will be just the same."

"Will it, Bob?" the girl asked doubtfully. "But of course there is nothing really wrong in going."

"I—should—say—not!" exploded Bob. "I'm sure it will be all right with Uncle Dick, Betty. Remember how he let us roam and explore in Oklahoma?"

The others in the party were not troubled by doubts in the least. They went hurrying through the snow with shouts and laughter; and if any forest animals were astir that day they must have been frightened by the noise the party made scrambling along on snowshoes. Not one of them but fell at times—and the very "twistiest" kind of falls! But nobody was hurt; although at one point Bobby fell flat on her back at the verge of a steep descent and there was no stopping her until she plunged into a deep drift at the bottom.

Tommy kicked off his snowshoes and ran down to haul her out while the others, seeing that she was unhurt, shouted their glee. Bobby was not often in a fix that she could not get out of by her own exertions. Being such an energetic and independent girl, she would not often accept help of her boy friends, especially of Tommy who hovered around her like a moth around a candle.

But when she had lost her snowshoes she found the soft snow so much deeper than she expected at the bottom of that hill that she was glad indeed to accept Tommy's aid. He dragged her out of the drift and set her upright. Even then she found that she could not climb up again by herself to where her friends were enjoying her discomfiture.

"Come on!" cried Tommy, who had kicked his own snowshoes off at the top of the slide. "Give us your hand, Bobby. We'll make it somehow."

But they did not "make it" easily. It seemed as though they could climb only so high and then slide back again. Under the shallow top snow the frozen crust was like pebbled glass. Tommy could barely kick the toes of his boots into it to make steps, and just as he had secured a footing in a particularly slippery place, Bobby would utter a shriek and slide to the bottom again.

Even Betty was almost ill with laughter as this occurred over and over again. But the Tucker twin finally proved himself to be master of the situation. He was determined to get Bobby to the top of the hill, and he succeeded.

Tom Tucker was a strong lad. Stooping, he commanded the girl to put her arms over his shoulders so that he could seize both wrists with one hand. Then he bent forward, carrying Bobby on his back and her weight upon his aided in breaking through the snow-crust and getting a footing.

He plodded up the slope, a little at a time, and after a while Betty and Bob helped them to the level brink of the hill. Tommy fell to the snow panting, and Bobby was inclined to scold for a minute. Then she gave Tommy one of her rare smiles and helped him up. She was not often so kind to him.

"You are a good child, Tommy Tucker," she proclaimed saucily, as she beat the loose snow off his coat. "In time you may be quite nice."

Betty and Ida Bellethorne praised him too; but Bob continued to laugh and when the party started on again the others learned why he was so amused.

The way to Candace Farm lay right down that slope to the bottom of which Bobby had tumbled, and all the exertion Tommy had put forth to save her was unnecessary. Bob led them along a lane right past the spot where Tommy had pulled the girl out of the snowbank!

"That's the meanest trick that was ever played on me!" declared Bobby, in high wrath at first. Then she began to appreciate the joke and laughed with the others. "I was going to tell the folks at home how Tommy saved me from the peril of being buried in the snowbank; but I guess I'd better not," she observed. "Don't blame me, Tommy. Give it to Bob."

"Ill get square with Bob," grumbled the Tucker twin. "No fear of that."

Bobby remained kind to him however; and as Tommy frankly admired her he was repaid for his effort. But every time Bob looked at Tom he burst out laughing.

They had struck into a straight trough in the snow, with maples on either side standing gaunt and strong, and a windrow of drifted snow where the fences were supposed to be—a road which Bob said the man at Mountain Camp had told him led straight to Candace Farm.

"Wish we had brought a sled with us," Tommy said. "We could have ridden the girls on it. Aren't you tired, Bobby?"

"Not as tired as you are, I warrant," she said, laughing at him. "Poor Tommy!"

"Aw, you go fish! I could carry you a mile and not feel it. Gee! What's this coming?"

Far down the snow-covered road they first heard shouts, then a cloud of snow-dust spurted into the air and hid whatever it was coming along the way toward them. Bob immediately drew Betty and Ida to one side of the road and Tommy urged Bobby to follow.

Suddenly out of the cloud of flying snow appeared a horse's head and plunging fore feet. Then another and another! They came along the road at a plunging, blundering pace, snorting and neighing. Behind them were men, evidently trying to stop the runaways.

"Colts!" shouted Bob. "Yearlings. All young horses. And just about wild. Remember that bunch we saw in Oklahoma, Betty, that was being driven to the shipping station? They are wild as bears."

Ida Bellethorne did not seem to be much disturbed by the possibility of the horses doing them any harm. She stood out before her companions and stared at the coming herd eagerly. The black mare she loved so, however, was not in this bunch of runaways.

The young stock swept past the watching party from Mountain Camp, their pace rapid in spite of the hard going. They kept to the snow-covered road, however. Behind them came half a dozen men, wind-spent already and not a little angry.

"Why didn't you stop 'em?" bawled one red-faced fellow. "If they spread out in some open pasture we'll be all day gathering them."

"Easy to stop 'em, I guess," returned Tommy. "They'd have trampled us down."

"Could stop a snowslide easier, I guess," Bob suggested. "But I tell you: We'll give you a hand collecting them. How did they get away?"

"Went over the paddock fence like a flock of sheep. Snow is so deep, you know," said the red-faced man. "Come on, you boys, if you will. The girls can go on to the house and Mrs. Candace will let 'em warm up. It's only a little way."

The "little way" proved to be a good two miles; but the three girls did not falter. They saw the big farmhouse and the great barns and snow-filled paddocks a long way ahead.

"I'll be glad of that 'warm'," confessed Betty, as they turned in at the entrance to the lane. "And maybe Mrs. Candace will give us a cup of tea."

At that moment Bobby clutched her arm and pointed up the lane. "See there! He'll fall! Oh, look!"

Betty was as startled as her chum when she spied what Bobby had first seen. A little, crooked man was crawling out above the hay door of the main barn upon a timber that was here thrust out from the framework and to which was attached a block and fall. The rope had evidently fouled in the block and he was trying to detach it.

"That's Hunchie Slattery!" gasped Betty, "What a chance he is taking!"

For everything was sheathed in ice from the effect of the rain and frost of the night before. That timber was as slippery as glass.

Ida Bellethorne set off on a run for the barn; but unlike Bobby she did not say a word. Had she thought of any way to help the crooked little man, however, she was too late. Hunchie suddenly slipped, clutched vainly at the rope, which gave under his weight, and he came down "on the run."

The rope undoubtedly broke his fall. He would have been killed had he plunged immediately to the frozen ground beneath.

As it was, when the three girls reached him, he was unconscious and it was plain by the attitude in which he lay that his leg was broken.



CHAPTER XIX

THE EMERGENCY

"Poor Hunchie!" murmured Ida Bellethorne, "I hope it wasn't because he was surprised to see me that he fell."

"His surprise did not make that timber slippery with ice," said Betty, looking up. "Oh! Here's a lady!"

A comfortable looking woman with a shawl over her head was hurrying from the kitchen door of the Candace farmhouse.

"What has happened to that poor man? He's been battered and kicked about so much, it would seem, there ain't much can happen to him that he hasn't already suffered.

"Ah! Poor fellow!" she added, stooping over the senseless Hunchie. "What a deal of trouble some folks seem bound to have. And not another man on the place!"

She stood up again and stared at the three girls. Her broad, florid face was all creased with trouble now, but Betty thought she must ordinarily be a very cheerful woman indeed.

"They've gone chasing the young stock that broke away. Dear me! what is going to happen to this poor fellow? Bill and the rest may be gone for hours, and there's bones broke here, that's sure."

"Where's a doctor?" asked Bobby eagerly.

"Eleven miles away, my dear, if he's an inch. Dr. Pevy is the only man for a broken bone in these woods. Poor Hunchie!"

"Can't we get him into his bed?" asked Betty. "He'll freeze here."

"You're right," replied the woman, who afterward told them she was Mrs. Candace. "Yes, we'll take him into the house and put him into a good bed. Can you girls lift him?"

They could and did. And without too much effort the three transported the injured man, who was but a light weight, across the yard, into the house, and to a room which Mrs. Candace showed them. He began to groan and mutter before they managed to get him on the bed.

There was an old woman who helped Mrs. Candace in the house, and the two removed Hunchie's outer garments and made him as comfortable as possible while the girls waited in much excitement in the sitting room.

"He saw one of you girls and knows you," said Mrs. Candace, coming out of the bedroom. "But he talks about that mare, Ida Bellethorne."

"This is Ida Bellethorne," said Betty, pointing to the English girl.

"I declare! I thought Hunchie was out of his head. How comes you are named after that horse, girl?"

Ida explained her connection with the black mare and with Hunchie.

"You'd better go in and talk to him. Maybe it will case his pain. But that shin bone is sticking right through the flesh of his leg. It's awful! And he's in terrible pain. If Bill don't come back soon——"

"Isn't there any man on the place?" asked Betty, interrupting.

"None but them with Bill hunting the young stock."

"And the boys—our friends—have gone with them," explained Betty. "Somebody must get the surgeon."

"How are we going to do it? The telephone wires are down," explained Mrs. Candace. "And there ain't a horse properly shod for traveling on this ice. I fear some of that young stock will break their legs."

"We saw them skating all over the road," said Bobby. "But how gay and excited they were!"

"A ridin' horse would have to go at a foot pace," explained Mrs. Candace, "unless it was sharpened. I don't know——"

Ida had gone into the bedroom to speak with the injured man. She looked out at this juncture and excitedly beckoned to Betty. Betty ran in to find the crooked little man looking even more crooked and pitiful than ever under the blankets. He was groaning and the perspiration stood on his forehead. That he was in exceeding pain there could be no doubt.

"He says Ida Bellethorne is sharpened," gasped Ida.

"Oh! You mean she is fixed to travel on ice on frozen ground?"

"I 'ad to lead 'er up 'ere from the station, Miss. Ain't I saw you before, Miss?" said Hunchie, staring at Betty. "At Mr. Bolter's?"

"Yes, yes!" cried Betty. "Can the mare travel on this hard snow?"

"Yes, ma'am. I didn't draw the calks for I exercised 'er each d'y, I did. I didn't want 'er to fall. An' now I failed myself!"

The two girls looked at each other significantly. Ida was easily led out of the room. Betty put the question to her.

"That's just it, Betty," said the English girl, almost in tears. "I never learned to ride. I never did ride. My nurse was afraid to let me learn when I was little, and although I love horses, I only know how to drive them. It's like a sailor never having learned to swim."

Betty beat her hands together in excitement. "Never mind! Never mind!" she cried. "I can ride. I can ride any horse. I am not afraid of your Ida Bellethorne. And none of the boys or men is here. I'll go for the doctor."

"I don't know if it is best for you to," groaned Ida.

"Call Mrs. Candace." They were in the kitchen, and Ida ran to summon the farm woman while Betty got into her coat. Mrs. Candace came, hurrying.

"What is this I hear?" she demanded. "I couldn't let you ride that horse. You will be thrown or something."

"No I shan't, Mrs. Candace. I can ride. And Hunchie says the mare is sharpened."

"So she is. I had forgotten," the woman admitted thoughtfully.

"And the poor fellow suffers so. Some lasting harm may be done if we don't get a surgeon quickly. Where does Dr. Pevy live?" demanded Betty urgently.

The fact that the injured hostler was really in great pain and possibly in some danger, caused Mrs. Candace finally to agree to the girl's demand. Betty ran out with Ida to get the mare and saddle her. Betty was not dressed properly for such a venture as this; but she wore warm undergarments, and stout shoes.

The black mare was so gentle with all her spirit and fire that Betty did not feel any fear. She and Ida led the beautiful creature out upon the barn floor and found saddle and bridle for her. In ten minutes Betty was astride the mare and Ida led her out of the stable.

Mrs. Candace had already given Betty clear directions regarding the way to Dr. Pevy's; but she now stood on the door-stone and called repetitions of these directions after her.

Bobby waved her fur piece and shouted encouragement too. But Ida Bellethorne ran into the house to attend the injured Hunchie and did not watch Betty and the black mare out of sight as the others did.



CHAPTER XX

BETTY'S RIDE

When Betty Gordon and her young friends had set out from Mountain Camp on their snowshoe hike the sun shone brilliantly and every ice-covered branch and fence-rail sparkled as though bedewed with diamond dust. Now that it was drawing toward noon the sky was overcast again and the wind, had Betty stopped to listen to it, might be heard mourning in the tops of the pines.

But Ida Bellethorne, the black mare, gave Betty no opportunity of stopping to listen to the wind mourn. No, indeed! The girl had all she could do for the first mile or two to keep her saddle and cling to the reins.

When first they set forth from the Candace stables the mare went gingerly enough for a few rods. She seemed to know that the frozen crust of the old drifts just beneath the loose snow was perilous.

But her sharpened calks gave her a grip on the frozen snow that the wise mare quickly understood. She lengthened her stride. She gathered speed. And once getting her usual swift gait, with expanded nostrils and erect ears, she skimmed over the frozen way as a swallow skims the air. Betty had never traveled so fast in her life except in a speeding automobile.

She could easily believe that Ida Bellethorne had broken most of the track records of the English turf. She might make track history here in the United States, if nothing happened to her!

Betty was wise enough to know that, had Mr. Candace been at home, even in this earnest need for a surgeon he would never have allowed the beautiful and valuable mare to have been used in this way. But there was no other horse on the place that could be trusted to travel at any gait.

Ida Bellethorne certainly was traveling! The speed, the keen rush of the wind past her, the need for haste and her own personal peril, all served to give Betty a veritable thrill.

If Ida made a misstep—if she went down in a heap—Betty was pretty sure that she, herself, would be hurt. She retained a tight grip upon the reins. The mare was no velvet-mouthed animal. Betty doubted if she had the strength in her arms to pull the creature down to a walk now that she was started.

The instructions Mrs. Candace had given the girl pointed to a descent into the valley for some miles, and almost by a direct road, and then around a sharp turn and up the grade by a branch road to the village where Dr. Pevy lived. Betty was sure she would not lose her way; the question was, could she cling to the saddle and keep the mare on her feet until the first exuberance of Ida's spirit was controlled? The condition of the road did not so much matter, for once the mare found that she did not slip on the crust she trod the way firmly and with perfect confidence.

"She is a dear—she undoubtedly is," Betty thought. "But I feel just as though I were being run away with by a steam engine and did not know how to close the throttle or reverse the engine. Dear me!"

She might well say "dear me." Uncle Dick would surely have been much worried for her safety if he could know what she was doing. Betty by no means appreciated in full her danger.

Indeed, she scarcely thought of danger. Ida Bellethorne seemed as sure-footed as a chamois. Her calks threw bits of ice-crust behind her, and she never slipped nor slid. There was nobody on the road. There was not even the mark of a sledge, although along the ditch were the shuffling prints of snowshoes. Some pedestrian had gone this way in the early morning.

This was not the road by which Betty and her friends had been transported by Mr. Jaroth. There was not even a hut like Bill Kedders' beside it. In places the thick woods verged right on the track on either side and in these tunnels it seemed to be already dusk.

It flashed into Betty's mind that there might be savage animals in these thick woods. Bears, and wild cats, and perhaps even the larger Canadian lynx, might be hovering in the dark wood. It would not be pleasant to have one of those animals spring out at one, perhaps from an overhanging limb, as the little mare and her rider dashed beneath!

"Just the same," the girl thought, "at the pace Ida Bellethorne is carrying me, such wild animals couldn't jump quick enough to catch me. Guess I needn't be afraid of them."

There were perils in her path—most unexpected perils. Betty would never have even dreamed of what really threatened her. For fifteen minutes Ida Bellethorne galloped on and the girl knew she must have come a third of the way to Dr. Pevy's office.

The mare's first exuberance passed. Of her own volition she drew down to a canter. Her speed still seemed almost phenominal to the girl riding her, but Betty began to feel more secure in the saddle.

They reached the top of a steep hill. The hedge of tall pines and underbrush drew closer in on either side. The road was very narrow. As the mare started down the incline it seemed as though they were going into a long and steep chute.

Before this Betty had noted the ice-hung telephone and telegraph wires strung beside the road. Sheeted in the frozen rain and snow the heavy wires had dragged many of the poles askew. Here and there a wire was broken.

It never entered the girl's mind that there was danger in those wires. And, perhaps, in most of them there was not. But across this ravine into which the road plunged, and slantingly, were strung much heavier wires—feed cables from the Cliffdale power station over the hill.

"Why, look at those icicles!" exclaimed Betty, with big eyes and watching the hanging wires ahead. "If they fell they would kill a person, I do believe!"

She tugged with all her might at Ida Bellethorne's reins, and now, well breathed, the mare responded to the unuttered command. She came into a walk. Betty continued to stare at the heavily laden wires spanning the road, the heavier power wires above the sagging series of telephone and telegraph wires.

In watching them so closely the girl discovered another, and even more startling fact. One of the poles bearing up the feed wires was actually pitched at such an angle from the top of the bank on the right hand that Betty felt sure the wires themselves were all that held the pole from falling.

"There is going to be an accident here," declared the girl aloud. "I wonder the company doesn't send out men to fix it. Although I guess they could not prop up that pole. It has gone too far."

Even as she spoke the mare stopped, snorting. Her instinct was more keen than Betty's reasoning.

With a screeching breaking and tearing of wood and wire the trembling pole fell! Betty might, had she urged her mount, have cleared the place and escaped. But the girl lacked that wisdom.

The pole fell across the deep road and its two heavy cables came in contact with the wires strung from the other poles below. Instantly the ravine was lit by a blinding flash of blue flame—a flame that ran from wire to wire, from pole to pole, melting the ice that clung to them, hissing and crackling and giving off shooting spears of flame that threatened any passer-by.

The mare, snorting and fearful, scrambled back, swerved, and tried to escape from the ravine; but Betty had her under good control now. She had no spurs, but she yanked savagely at the bit and wheeled Ida Bellethorne again to face the sputtering electric flames that barred the road.

Only a third of the way to the doctor's and the way made impassable! What should she do? If she turned back, Betty did not know where or how to strike into the thick and pathless forest. Hunchie, suffering from his injured leg, must be aided as soon as possible. Her advance must not be stayed.

Yet there before her the sparking, darting flames spread the width of the ravine. Burning a black hole already in the deep drifts, the crossed wires forbade the girl to advance another yard!



CHAPTER XXI

BETTY COMES THROUGH

Betty admitted that she was badly frightened. She was afraid of the crossed wires, and would have been in any case. The spurting blue flames she knew would savagely burn her and Ida Bellethorne if they touched them, and the wires might give a shock that would kill either girl or horse.

But seven miles or so beyond those sputtering flames was Dr. Pevy's office. And Dr. Pevy was needed right away at Candace Farm.

A picture of poor Hunchie lying white and moaning in the bed rose in Betty's memory. She could not return and report that it was impossible for her to reach the doctor's office. Afraid as she was of the crossed wires, she was more afraid of showing the white feather.

If Bob Henderson were here in her situation Betty was sure he would not back down. And if Bob could overcome difficulties, why couldn't Betty? The thought inspired the girl to do as Bob would do—come through.

"I must do it!" Betty choked, holding the mare firmly headed toward the writhing, crackling wires. "Ida! Get up! You can jump it. You—just—must!"

The black mare crouched and snorted. Betty would have given a good deal for tiny spurs in the heels of her shoes or for a whip to lay along the mare's flank. Spirited as the creature was, and well trained, too, her fear of fire made her shrink from the leap.

There was a width of six feet of darting flames. The electricity in the heavy cables was melting the other wires, and from the broken end of each wire the blue light spurted. The snow was melting all about, turning black and yellow in streaks. Betty did not know how long this would keep up; but every minute she delayed poor Hunchie paid for in continued suffering.

"We must do it!" she shrieked to the horse. "You've got to—there!"

She whipped off her velvet hat and struck Ida Bellethorne again and again. The mare crouched, measured the distance, and leaped into the air. Well for her and for Betty that Ida Bellethorne had a good pedigree; had come of a long line of forebears that had been taught to jump hedges, fences, water-holes and bogs. None of them had ever made such a perilous leap as this!

The mare landed in softening snow, for the scathing flames were melting the drifts on either side. Betty had felt the rush of heat rising from the cables and had put her hat over her face.

Ida Bellethorne squealed. Without doubt she had been scorched somewhere. And now secure on her feet she darted away through the ravine, running faster than she had run while Betty had bestrode her.

Betty could not glance back at the sputtering wires. She must keep her gaze fixed ahead. Although at the speed the mare was now running it is quite doubtful if the girl could have retarded her mount in any degree. They came to the forks that Mrs. Candace had told her of, and Betty managed to turn the frightened mare up the steeper road to the left. There were few landmarks that the snow had not hidden; but the way to Dr. Pevy's was so direct that one could scarcely mistake it.

Ida Bellethorne began to cool down after a while and Betty could guide her more easily. She had begun to talk to the pretty creature soothingly, and leaned forward in her saddle to pat the mare's neck.

"I don't blame you for being scared, Ida Bellethorne," crooned Betty. "I was scared myself, and I'm scared yet. But don't mind. Just be easy. Your pretty black apron in front is all spattered with froth, poor dear! I wonder if this run has done your cough any harm—or any good. Anyway, you haven't coughed since we started."

But Betty knew that if the mare stood for a minute she must be covered and rubbed down. She had this in her mind when she came to the blacksmith shop and the store, directly opposite each other. Dr. Pevy's, she had been told, was the second house beyond on the blacksmith side of the road.

It proved to be a comfortable looking cottage with a barn at the back, and she urged Ida Bellethorne around to the barn without stopping at the house. The barn door was open and a man in greasy overalls was tinkering about a small motor-car. He was a pleasant-looking man with a beard and eyeglasses and Betty was sure he must be the doctor before he even spoke to her.

"Hullo!" exclaimed the amateur machanic, rising up with a wrench in one hand and an oil can in the other. "Whew! That mare has been traveling some. And such a beauty! You're from Bill Candace's I'm sure. Did she run away with you? Here, let me help you."

But Betty was out of the saddle and had led the mare in upon the floor, although Ida Bellethorne looked somewhat askance at the partly dismantled car.

"Needn't be afraid of the road-bug, my beauty," said Dr. Pevy, putting out a knowing hand to stroke the mare's neck. "She must be rubbed down and a cloth put on her——"

"I know," said Betty hastily. "I'll do it if you'll let me. But can you go back with me, Doctor?"

"To the Candace Farm?"

"Yes, sir. A man has been seriously hurt and there was nobody else to come."

"Wonder you got here without having a fall," said Dr. Pevy.

"She is sharpened. And she is a dear!" gasped Betty. "But I hope you can start right away. Hunchie is suffering so."

"Can't use the road-bug, that's sure," said Dr. Pevy, glancing again at the car. "That's why I was doctoring her now while the snow is too deep. But I still have old Standby and the sleigh. I'll start back with you in a few minutes and we'll lead the mare. The exercise will do her good. My! What a handsome creature she is."

"Yes, sir. She is quite wonderful," said Betty; and while they gave Ida Bellethorne the attention she needed Betty told the doctor all about Hunchie and her ride through the forest. When Dr. Pevy heard about the broken wires in the road, he went to the house and telephoned to the Cliffdale power house to tell them where the break was. The linemen were already searching for it.

"That peril will be averted immediately," he said coming back with his overalls removed, a coat over his arm and carrying his case in his other hand. "That's it, my dear. Walk her up and down. Such a beauty!"

He got out his light sleigh and then led Standby, a big, red-roan horse, out on the floor to harness him.

"These automobiles are all right when the snow doesn't fly," Dr. Pevy remarked. "But up here in the hills we have so much snow that one has to keep a horse anyway or else give up business during the winter. You were a plucky girl to come so far on that mare, my dear. A Washington girl, you say?"