willing horses, was slower.

Joe picked out the best, and easiest, route possible, but that was not
saying much, and it was not until nearly three o'clock, and growing
quite dark, that he came within sight of the cut. Then the storm was so
thick that he could not see the stalled train.

"I'll have to leave the team as near to it as I can get, and walk in to
tell Reggie and Mabel that I've come for them," Joe decided.

The highway crossed the railroad track a short distance from the end of
the cut nearest Riverside, and Joe, halting a moment to listen, and to
make sure no trains were approaching, drove over the rails.

"Though there isn't much danger, now, of a train getting through that,"
he said to himself, as he saw the big drift of snow that blocked the
cut. Behind that drift was the stalled train, he reflected, and then, as
he looked at the white mound, he realized that he had made a mistake.

"I can never get through that drift myself," he said. "I'll have to
drive up to the other end of the cut, by which the engine and cars
entered. Stupid of me not to have thought of that at first."

He turned his horses, and again sought the highway that led along the
cut, parallel to it, and about a quarter of a mile distant. Joe
listened, again hoping he could hear the whistle of the approaching
rescue-train, for at the station he had been told one was being fitted
out, and would carry a gang of snow shovelers. But the howl of the wind
was all that came to his ears.

"This means another mile of travel," Joe thought, as he urged on the
horses. "It will be pitch dark by the time I get back to town with them.
I hope Mabel doesn't take cold. It sure is bitter."

Joe found the going even harder as he kept on, but he would not give up
now.

"There's one consolation," he reasoned, "the wind will be at our backs
going home. That will make it easier."

The road that crossed the track at the other end of Deep Rock Cut was
farther from the beginning of the defile, and Joe, leaving the horses in
a sheltering clump of trees, struggled down the track, the rails of
which were out of sight under the snow.

"I wonder if Mabel can walk back?" he said aloud. "If not I guess Reggie
and I can carry her. It's pretty deep. I didn't get here any too soon."

Something dark loomed up before him, amid the wall of white, swirling
flakes.

"There's the train!" exclaimed Joe, in relief.

It was indeed the rear coach of the stalled passenge