Dicky, darling, please don't roll off your
perch. We've plenty of rugs and overcoats: enough to stock Nansen, Grim,
so we shan't all wake up frozen to death."

Gus Todd smiled dutifully at this bull.

The guard came with a modest request.

"Can you roost with us? Oh! certainly. Bag another cushion for the
floor, and then you're all right. More, the merrier; and let the
ventilation go hang. If Mr. Worcester doesn't fall on you, guard, I dare
say you'll live to tell the tale."

The Amorians, who trusted to Acton as they would have trusted to no one
else on earth, entered into the fun of the thing, and the last joke of
the night was a solemn warning to Grim from Dick Worcester to avoid
snoring, as he valued his life.

"We can manage like this for one night, anyhow," whispered Acton to the
guard, "for we really keep each other warm. We'll get out of this
to-morrow."

The guard did not reply to this for fully a minute. He whispered back,
"Listen to the wind, sir. The storm isn't half over yet. I've got my
doubts about to-morrow. We're snowed up for more'n a day."

II

OVER THE FELLS

When day dawned, and the snowed-up travellers began to look around them,
they found that, though the snow was not descending nearly as heavily as
on the night before, the wind was still strong and the weather bitterly
cold.

On the windward side of the train the snow had drifted almost up to the
window panes, but on the leeward there was considerably less. Looking up
and down the line, they could see their train surrounded by its dazzling
environment, and the drifts were so high that they had filled the low
cutting stretching towards Lowbay level to its top.

The train was an island in a sea of snow.

The Amorians, stiff and cramped with their narrow quarters of the night,
dropped off into the snow on the sheltered side and explored as far as
the overturned engine, now stark and cold, with wonder and awe.

"Why, we're like rats in a trap!" exclaimed Gus Todd.

"We'll have a council of war now," said Acton, as he saw the driver and
his mate floundering towards them, "and then we can see what's to be
done--if anything can be done."

It seemed the result of the council was to be the decision that there
was nothing to be done. To go back to Lowbay, or forward to Lansdale,
was plainly impossible, and neither guard nor driver thought they could
be ploughed out under two days at the earliest. "And yet," concluded
Acton, "we