ey went through the Pullmans together.

The first Pullman contained four or five passengers; the next, in which
Eaton had his berth, was still empty as they passed through. The
porter had made up all the berths, and only luggage and newspapers and
overcoats occupied the seats. The next Pullman also, at first glance,
seemed to have been deserted in favor of the diner forward or of the
club-car further back. The porter had made up all the berths there
also, except one; but some one still was sleeping behind the curtains
of Section Three, for a man's hand hung over the aisle. It was a
gentleman's hand, with long, well-formed fingers, sensitive and at the
same time strong. That was the berth of Harriet Dorne's father; Eaton
gazed down at the hand as he approached the section, and then he looked
up quickly to the girl. She had observed the hand, as also had Avery;
but, plainly, neither of them noticed anything strange either in its
posture or appearance. Their only care had been to avoid brushing
against it on their way down the aisle so as not to disturb the man
behind the curtain; but Eaton, as he saw the hand, started.

He was the last of the three to pass, and so the others did not notice
his start; but so strong was the fascination of the hand in the aisle
that he turned back and gazed at it before going on into the last car.
Some eight or ten passengers--men and women--were lounging in the
easy-chairs of the observation-room; a couple, ulstered and fur-capped,
were standing on the platform gazing back from the train.

The sun was still shining, and the snow had stopped some hours before;
but the wind which had brought the storm was still blowing, and
evidently it had blown a blizzard after the train stopped at four that
morning. The canyon through the snowdrifts, bored by the giant rotary
plow the night before, was almost filled; drifts of snow eight or ten
feet high and, in places, pointing still higher, came up to the rear of
the train; the end of the platform itself was buried under three feet
of snow; the men standing on the platform could barely look over the
higher drifts.

"There's no way from the train in that direction now," Harriet Dorne
lamented as she saw this.

"There was no way five minutes after we stopped," one of the men
standing at the end of the car volunteered. "From Fracroft on--I was
the only passenger in sleeper Number Two, and they'd told me to get up;
they gave me a berth in anoth