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