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
do