Then it would be too late for them to fly South had they so desired. Now, with the heavy snow heaped upon everything edible, the feathered creatures were going to have a time of famine if they were not thought of by their human neighbors. Sparrows and chicadees are friendly little things and will keep close to human habitations in winter; but the bluejay, that saucy rascal, is always shy. He and his wilder brothers must be fed in the woods. There were the tracks of the birds—thousands and thousands of tracks about the gully. Roger began to throw out the grain, scattering it carefully on the snowcrust, while Joe climbed up the first tree with a lump of suet tied to a cord. “I got to tie it high,” he told Dorothy, who asked him, “’cause otherwise, Mr. Knapp says, dogs or foxes, or such like, will get it instead of the birds.” “Oh, I see,” Dorothy said. “Look where you step, Roger. See! the gully is level full of snow. What a drift!” This was true. The snow lay in the hollow from twenty to thirty feet in depth. None of the Dales could remember seeing so much snow before. Dorothy held the other pieces of suet for Joe while he climbed the second tree. It was during this process that she suddenly missed Roger. She could not hear him nor see him. “Roger!” she called. “What’s the matter with you?” demanded Joe tartly. “You’re scaring the birds.” “But Roger is scaring _me_,” his sister told him. “Look, Joe, from where you are. Can you see him? Is he hiding from us?” Joe gave a glance around; then he hastened to descend the tree. “What is it?” asked Dorothy worriedly. “What has happened to him?” Joe said never a word, but hastened along the bank of the gully. They could scarcely distinguish the line of the bank in some places and right at the very steepest part was a wallow in the snow. Something had sunk down there and the snow had caved in after it! “Roger!” gasped Dorothy, her heart beating fast and the muscles of her throat tightening. “Oh, cricky!” groaned Joe. “He’s gone down.” It was the steepest and deepest part of the gully. Not a sound came up from the huge drift into which the smaller boy had evidently tumbled—no answer to their cries. * * * * * Dorothy and her brothers had scarcely gone out of sight of the house when Major Dale, looking from the broad front window of his room, beheld a figure plowing through the heaped up snow and in at the gateway of The Cedars. It was not Nat and it was not Ned; at first he did not recognize the man approaching the front door at all. Then he suddenly uttered a shout which brought the housemaid from her dusting in the hall. “Major Dale! what is it, please? Can I do anything for you?” asked the girl, her hand upon her heart. “Great glory! did I scare you, Mina?” he demanded. “Well! I’m pretty near scared myself. Leastways, I am amazed. Run down and open the door for Mr. Knapp—and bring him right up here.”