She could not hear the wind or snow when she got into the dressing room.  This convinced her at first that the storm was over.  But she dropped one of the narrow windows at the top to see out, and found that a wall of hard-pack snow shrouded the window.  She tried to break through this drift with her arm wrapped in a towel.  But although she stood on a stool and thrust her arm out to her shoulder, her hand did not reach the open air!

“My goodness me!” gasped Betty Gordon.  “We’re stalled!  We’re snowbound!  What shall we ever do if the snow doesn’t melt pretty soon, or they don’t come and dig us out?”

She washed in haste, and having brought her clothes with her, she dressed promptly.  All the time she was considering what was to be done if, as it seemed, the train could not go on.

Just as she opened the door of the dressing room excited voices sounded at the end of the car.  The conductor and the porter were talking loudly.  The former suddenly shouted: 

“Ladies and gentlemen! is there a doctor in this coach?  We want a doctor right away!  Day coach ahead!  Child taken poison and must have a doctor.”

A breathless gabble of voices assured him that there was no physician in the coach.  He had already searched the other cars.  There was no doctor on the train.

“And we’re stalled here in this cut for nobody knows how long!” groaned the conductor.  “That woman is crazy in the next car.  Her two year old child got hold of some kind of poison and swallowed some of it.  The child will die for sure!”

Betty was terribly shocked at this speech.  She wriggled past the conductor and the troubled porter, and ran into the car ahead.  At first glance she spied the little group of mother and children that was the center of excitement.

CHAPTER XII

THE TUNNEL

The baby was screaming, the little boy of four or five looked miserably unhappy, and the worn and meager-looking mother was plainly frightened out of her wits.  She let the baby scream on the seat beside her while she held the little girl in her lap.

That youngster seemed to be the least disturbed of any of the party.  She was a pretty child, and robust.  She kicked vigorously against being held almost upside down by her mother (as though by that means the dose of poison could be coaxed out of the child) but she did not cry.

“The little dear!” cooed Betty, pushing through the ring of other passengers.  “What has happened to her?”

“She’ll be dead in five minutes,” croaked a sour visaged woman who bent over the back of the seat to stare at the crying baby without making an effort to relieve the mother in any way.

“What is the poison?” demanded Betty excitedly.

“It—­it’s——­I don’t know what the doctor called it,” wailed the poor mother.  “I had it in my handbag with other drops.  Nellie here is always playing with bottles.  She will drink out of bottles, much as I can do or say.”