At this Molly’s crying rose to a frantic scream.  “Oh, Betsy, don’t leave me here alone!  Don’t!  Don’t!  The wolves will get me!  Betsy, don’t leave me alone!” The child was wild with terror.

“But I can’t get you out myself!” screamed back Betsy, crying herself.  Her teeth were chattering with the cold.

“Don’t go!  Don’t go!” came up from the darkness of the pit in a piteous howl.  Betsy made a great effort and stopped crying.  She sat down on a stone and tried to think.  And this is what came into her mind as a guide:  “What would Cousin Ann do if she were here?  She wouldn’t cry.  She would think of something.”

Betsy looked around her desperately.  The first thing she saw was the big limb of a pine-tree, broken off by the wind, which half lay and half slantingly stood up against a tree a little distance above the mouth of the pit.  It had been there so long that the needles had all dried and fallen off, and the skeleton of the branch with the broken stubs looked like ... yes, it looked like a ladder!  That was what Cousin Ann would have done!

“Wait a minute!  Wait a minute, Molly!” she called wildly down the pit, warm all over in excitement.  “Now listen.  You go off there in a corner, where the ground makes a sort of roof.  I’m going to throw down something you can climb up on, maybe.”

“Ow!  Ow, it’ll hit me!” cried poor little Molly, more and more frightened.  But she scrambled off under her shelter obediently, while Betsy struggled with the branch.  It was so firmly imbedded in the snow that at first she could not budge it at all.  But after she cleared that away and pried hard with the stick she was using as a lever she felt it give a little.  She bore down with all her might, throwing her weight again and again on her lever, and finally felt the big branch perceptibly move.  After that it was easier, as its course was down hill over the snow to the mouth of the pit.  Glowing, and pushing, wet with perspiration, she slowly maneuvered it along to the edge, turned it squarely, gave it a great shove, and leaned over anxiously.  Then she gave a great sigh of relief!  Just as she had hoped, it went down sharp end first and stuck fast in the snow which had saved Molly from broken bones.  She was so out of breath with her work that for a moment she could not speak.  Then, “Molly, there!  Now I guess you can climb up to where I can reach you.”

Molly made a rush for any way out of her prison, and climbed, like the little practiced squirrel that she was, up from one stub to another to the top of the branch.  She was still below the edge of the pit there, but Betsy lay flat down on the snow and held out her hands.  Molly took hold hard, and, digging her toes into the snow, slowly wormed her way up to the surface of the ground.

It was then, at that very moment, that Shep came bounding up to them, barking loudly, and after him Cousin Ann striding along in her rubber boots, with a lantern in her hand and a rather anxious look on her face.