scope!" Whereupon we all pinched her for making a pun and went on
shivering.

Just when we got off the road I don't know, but gradually we became
aware that it was not hard earth we were riding over but something that
swished under the wheels like long grass.

"We're in a field!" cried Sahwah.

Nyoda turned the car around and we went a few yards, expecting to get
back into the road every minute. Then suddenly the car began to go down
hill very rapidly, and at the bottom there was a grand splash, and we
found ourselves up to the wheel hubs in water. We had run into a stream
of some kind. The bottom was soft mud and to keep from sinking we had
to go on across. Luckily it was shallow and not very wide and the water
did not come inside the car. Margery screamed all the way across and we
had a rather breathless few minutes, until we came out on the farther
bank. Once on dry land again Nyoda stopped the car and flatly refused
to drive another inch. We were off the road, we had no idea where we
were, and there was too much danger of running into things in the fog.
None of us dared to think what might have happened if that river had
been deep.

So here we were stranded, at about two o'clock in the morning, in a
field nobody knew where, by a road whose direction we could not even
guess, with a thick mantle of fog rolling around us as dense as the
smoke had been a few hours before. Could it have been only a few hours
before that we came near burning to death? And now we were in nearly as
much danger of freezing to death. Fire and dampness all in one night!
It certainly was a varied experience.