ome of old Tommy or the bears.

Still hanging to his reins, Asa had jumped from the scoot. Addison, too,
still clinging to his five halters, had leaped off. Before I got clear,
two horses bounded over me. The three spans on the scoot dashed down the
slope, but brought up abruptly on different sides of a tree. Some of
them were thrown down, and the others floundered over them. Two broke
away and ran with the led horses. It was a rough place, littered with
large rocks and fallen trees. In their panic the horses floundered over
those, but a little farther down came on a bare, shelving ledge that
overhung the brook. Probably they could not see where they were going,
or else those behind shoved the foremost off the brink; at any rate, six
of the horses went headlong down into the rocky bed of the torrent,
whence instantly arose heart-rending squeals of pain.

It had all happened so suddenly that we could not possibly have
prevented it. In fact, we had no more than picked ourselves up from
among the snowy logs and stones when they were down in the brook. Those
that had not gone over the ledge were galloping away down the valley.

"Goodness! What will the old Squire say to this?" were Addison's first
words.

After a search, we found a lantern under a heap of bags and harness. It
was cracked, but Asa succeeded in lighting it; and about the first
object I saw with any distinctness was old Tommy, doubled up behind a
tree.

"Are you hurt?" Addison called to him.

"Wal, I vum, I dunno!" the old man grunted. "Wa'n't that a rib-h'ister!"

Concluding that there was not much the matter with him, we hastened down
to the brook. There hung one horse--William-le-Bon--head downward,
pawing on the stones in the brook with his fore hoofs. He had caught his
left hind leg in the crotch of a yellow birch-tree that grew at the foot
of the ledges. In the brook lay Sally, with a broken foreleg. Beyond her
was Duncan, dead; he had broken his neck. Lill was cast between two big
stones; and she, too, had broken her leg. Moaning dolefully, Prince
floundered near by. Another horse had got to his feet; he was dragging
one leg, which seemed to be out of joint or broken.

Meanwhile the storm swirled and eddied. We did not know what to do. Asa
declared that it was useless to try to save Prince, and with a blow of
the axe he put him out of his misery. Then, while I held the lantern, he
and Addison cut the birch-tree in which William-le-Bon hung. The