Corners behind them, they did not know and hardly
cared, their communications that way being well-nigh cut off again. What
they thought of, and planned for, was simply how these cans at Lovejoy's
could be put on any downward train. For by this time they knew that all
trains would have lost their grades and their names, and that this milk
would go into Boston by the first engine that went there, though it rode
on the velvet of a palace car.

What train this might be, they did not know. From the hill above
Lovejoy's they could see poor old Dix, the station-master, with his wife
and boys, doing his best to make an appearance of shovelling in front of
his little station. But Dix's best was but little, for he had but one
arm, having lost the other in a collision, and so as a sort of pension
the company had placed him at this little flag-station, where was a roof
over his head, a few tickets to sell, and generally very little else to
do. It was clear enough that no working parties on the railroad had
worked up to Dix, or had worked down; nor was it very likely that any
would before night, unless the railroad people had better luck with
their drifts than our friends had found. But, as to this, who should
say? Snow-drifts are "mighty onsartain." The line of that road is in
general northwest, and to-day's wind might have cleaned out its gorges
as persistently as it had filled up our crosscuts. From Lovejoy's barn
they could see that the track was now perfectly clear for the half mile
where it crossed the Prescott meadows.

I am sorry to have been so long in describing thus the aspect of the
field after the first engagement. But it was on this condition of
affairs that, after full conference, the enterprises of the night were
determined. Whatever was to be done was to be done by men. And after
thorough regale on Mrs. Lovejoy's green tea, and continual return to her
constant relays of thin bacon gilded by unnumbered eggs; after cutting
and coming again upon unnumbered mince-pies, which, I am sorry to say,
did not in any point compare well with Huldah's,--each man thrust many
doughnuts into his outside pockets, drew on the long boots again, and
his buckskin gloves and mittens, and, unencumbered now by the care of
animals, started on the work of the evening. The sun was just taking his
last look at them from the western hills, where Reuben and John could
see Huldah's chimney smoking. The plan was, by taking a double hand-sled
of L