Before this Betty had noted the ice-hung telephone and telegraph wires strung beside the road.  Sheeted in the frozen rain and snow the heavy wires had dragged many of the poles askew.  Here and there a wire was broken.

It never entered the girl’s mind that there was danger in those wires.  And, perhaps, in most of them there was not.  But across this ravine into which the road plunged, and slantingly, were strung much heavier wires—­feed cables from the Cliffdale power station over the hill.

“Why, look at those icicles!” exclaimed Betty, with big eyes and watching the hanging wires ahead.  “If they fell they would kill a person, I do believe!”

She tugged with all her might at Ida Bellethorne’s reins, and now, well breathed, the mare responded to the unuttered command.  She came into a walk.  Betty continued to stare at the heavily laden wires spanning the road, the heavier power wires above the sagging series of telephone and telegraph wires.

In watching them so closely the girl discovered another, and even more startling fact.  One of the poles bearing up the feed wires was actually pitched at such an angle from the top of the bank on the right hand that Betty felt sure the wires themselves were all that held the pole from falling.

“There is going to be an accident here,” declared the girl aloud.  “I wonder the company doesn’t send out men to fix it.  Although I guess they could not prop up that pole.  It has gone too far.”

Even as she spoke the mare stopped, snorting.  Her instinct was more keen than Betty’s reasoning.

With a screeching breaking and tearing of wood and wire the trembling pole fell!  Betty might, had she urged her mount, have cleared the place and escaped.  But the girl lacked that wisdom.

The pole fell across the deep road and its two heavy cables came in contact with the wires strung from the other poles below.  Instantly the ravine was lit by a blinding flash of blue flame—­a flame that ran from wire to wire, from pole to pole, melting the ice that clung to them, hissing and crackling and giving off shooting spears of flame that threatened any passer-by.

The mare, snorting and fearful, scrambled back, swerved, and tried to escape from the ravine; but Betty had her under good control now.  She had no spurs, but she yanked savagely at the bit and wheeled Ida Bellethorne again to face the sputtering electric flames that barred the road.

Only a third of the way to the doctor’s and the way made impassable!  What should she do?  If she turned back, Betty did not know where or how to strike into the thick and pathless forest.  Hunchie, suffering from his injured leg, must be aided as soon as possible.  Her advance must not be stayed.

Yet there before her the sparking, darting flames spread the width of the ravine.  Burning a black hole already in the deep drifts, the crossed wires forbade the girl to advance another yard!