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He hesitated, standing in the snow half way between the pung and the snow-smothered door of the hut. Sheltered as it had been by the hill and by the woods, the hut was not masked so much by the drifted snow on its front. They could see the upper part of the door-casing. "By gravy!" ejaculated Mr. Jaroth, "it don't sound human. I can't make it out.
So engaged was the person weeping in the sorrow that convulsed him, or her, that the jingling of the bells as the horses shook their heads or the voices of those in the pung did not attract attention. Jaroth stood in the snow and neither advanced nor retreated. It really did seem as though he was afraid to approach nearer to the hut on the mountain-side!
Gordon," said Fred Jaroth cheerfully. "We often put up thirty people in the summer. We've a great ranch of a house. And I can help you up the bank yonder and beat you a path through the woods to the main road. Nothing simpler. Your trunks will get to Cliffdale sometime and you can carry your hand baggage." "Not many trunks, thank goodness," replied Mr. Gordon. "What do you think, Betty?
They coasted the entire down-grade to the little railroad station where Fred Jaroth was telegraph operator with scarcely more peril than as though they had been riding behind the Jaroth horses. But they were on the qui vive all the time. Bobby declared her heart was in her mouth so much that she could taste it. There were places when the speed threatened disaster.
Funny things they say happen up here in these woods. I wouldn't be a mite surprised if that crying or " He hesitated while the boys and girls, and even Mr. Gordon, stared amazedly at him. "Who do you think it is?" asked Uncle Dick finally. "Well, it ain't Bill," grumbled Jaroth. The sobbing continued.
But as they listened for a reply there was not one of the party that did not distinguish quite clearly the sound of weeping from inside the mountain hut. "That ain't Bill!" exclaimed Jaroth. "That's as sure as you're a foot high. Nor yet it ain't his wife. If either one of them has cried since they were put into short clothes I miss my guess. Huh!"
"Bill Kedders' hut," he said to Mr. Gordon. "'Tain't likely he's there this time o' year. Usually he and his wife go to Cliffdale to spend the winter with their married daughter." "Just the same," cried Bob suddenly, "there's smoke coming out of that chimney. Don't you see it, Uncle Dick?" "The boy's right!" ejaculated Jaroth, with sudden anxiety.
Once at the top of the bank they found it rather easy following Jaroth through the woods. And when they reached the road or the place where the highway would have been if the snow had not drifted over fences and all they met the party from the station bringing up food and other comforts for the snowbound passengers.
The boys might have sat there longer and, like boa-constrictors, gorged themselves into lethargy. However, adventure was ahead and the sound of the sledge bells excited the young people. They got on their coats and caps and furs and mittens and trooped out to the "pung," as the elder Jaroth called the low, deep, straw-filled sledge to which he had attached four strong farm horses.
This was not the road by which Betty and her friends had been transported by Mr. Jaroth. There was not even a hut like Bill Kedders' beside it. In places the thick woods verged right on the track on either side and in these tunnels it seemed to be already dusk. It flashed into Betty's mind that there might be savage animals in these thick woods.
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