ndivided attention. He asked:

"What do you believe we can do, Betty?"

"Make use of Mr. Canary's pung."

"Cricky! What will draw it? Where is the span of noble steeds to be found?
Old Bobsky would break his neck."

"One horse. One wonderful horse, Bob!" cried Betty clapping her hands
suddenly. "I am sure I'm right. Uncle Dick!"

"What do you mean, Betty?" cried Bobby, shaking her. "What horse?"

"Gravitation," announced Betty, her eyes shining. "That's his name."

"Great goodness!" gasped Bob. "I see a light. But Betty, how'd we steer
it?"

"The front runners are attached to the tongue. Tie ropes to the tongue and
steer it that way," Betty said, so eagerly that her words tumbled over
each other. "Can't we do it, Uncle Dick? We'll all pile into the pung,
with a lot of straw to keep us warm, and just slide down the hills to the
railroad station. What say?"

For a while there was a good deal said by all present. Mr. and Mrs. Canary
at first scouted the reasonableness of the idea. But Mr. Gordon, being an
engineer and, as Bob said, "up to all such problems," considered Betty's
suggestion carefully.

In the first place the need was serious. Especially for the much troubled
Ida. If she could not reach the dock on New York's water-front by eleven
o'clock the next morning, her aunt would doubtless sail on the _San
Salvador_, and then there was no knowing when the English girl would be
able to find her only living relative.

The party had ridden over the mountain road in coming to Mountain Camp,
and Uncle Dick remembered the course pretty well. Although it was a
continual grade, as one might say, it was an easy grade. And there were
few turns in the road.

Drifted with snow as it was, and that snow crusted, the idea of coasting
all the way to the railroad station did not seem so wild a thought. The
road was fenced for most of the way on both sides. And over those fences
the drifts rose smoothly, making almost a trough of the road.

"When you come to think of it, Jack," Uncle Dick said to Mr. Canary, "it
is not very different from our toboggan chute yonder. Only it is longer."

"A good bit longer," said Mr. Canary, shaking his head.

However, it was plain that the idea interested Uncle Dick. He hastened out
to look at the pung. Bob followed him, and they were gone half an hour or
more. When they returned Bob was grinning broadly.

"Get ready for the time of your lives, girls," he whispered to Betty and
Bobby.