Laura Polk called "the inner girl." Through the window they saw the
drifts piling up along the right of way, wherever the lamps revealed
them; country stations darkened and almost buried under the white mantle;
and the steadily driving snow itself that slanted earthward--a curtain
that shut out of sight all objects a few yards beyond the car windows.

"My! this is dreadful," murmured Bess, when the train halted again for
the drifts to be shoveled out of a cot. "When do you s'pose we'll ever
get home?"

"Not at eight o'clock in the morning," Nan announced promptly. "That's
sure. I don't know just how many miles it is--and I never could tell
anything about one of these railroad time-tables."

"Laura says she can read a menu card in a French restaurant more easily,"
chuckled Bess. "I wonder how their train is getting on?"

"I'm so selfishly worried about our own train that I'm not thinking of
them," admitted Nan. "There! we've started again."

But the train puffed on for only a short distance and then "snubbed" its
nose into another snow-bank. The wheels of the locomotive clogged, the
flues filled with snow, the wet fuel all but extinguished the fire.
Before the engineer could back the heavy train, the snow swirled in
behind it and built a drift over the platform of the rear coach. The
train was completely stalled.

This happened after eleven o'clock and while they were between stations.
It was a lonely and rugged country, and even farm-houses were far apart.
The train was about midway between stations, the distance from one to the