wn 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."