s
season's accounts.

"You go in and tell him," Addison said to me.

I dreaded to do it, but at last opened the door and stole in.

"Ah, my son," the old gentleman said, looking up, "so you are back."

"Yes, sir," said I, "but--but we've had trouble, sir, terrible trouble."

"What!" he exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

"We've had a dreadful time. Some bears came out ahead of us and scared
the horses!" I blurted out. "And we've lost six of them! They ran off
the ledges into Saddleback brook and broke their legs. We had to kill
them."

The old Squire jumped to his feet with a look of distress on his face.
Addison now came into the room, and helped me to give a more coherent
account of what had happened.

After his first exclamation of dismay, the old Squire sat down and heard
our story to the end. Naturally, he felt very badly, for the accident
had cost him at least a thousand dollars. He did not reproach us,
however.

"I have only myself to blame," he said. "It is a bad way of taking
horses into the woods--leading so many of them together. I have always
felt that it was risky. They ought to go separate, with a driver for
every span. This must be a lesson for the future."

"It is an ill wind that blows no one any good," says the proverb. Our
disaster proved a bonanza to old Tommy Goss; he set his traps there all
winter, near the frozen bodies of the horses, and caught marten,
fishers, mink, "lucivees," and foxes by the dozen.

CHAPTER XXXI

CZAR BRENCH

The loss of Master Joel Pierson as our teacher at the district school
the following winter, was the greatest disappointment of the year. We
had anticipated all along that he was coming back, and I think he had
intended to do so; but an offer of seventy-five dollars a month--more
than double what our small district could pay--to teach a village school
in an adjoining county, robbed us of his invaluable services; for
Pierson was at that time working his way through college and could not
afford to lose so good an opportunity to add to his resources during the
winter vacation.

We did not learn this till the week before school was to begin; and when
his letter to Addison reached us, explaining why he could not come,
there were heart-felt lamentations at the old Squire's and at the
Edwards farm.

I really think that the old Squire would have made up the difference in
wages to Master Pierson from his own purse; but the offer to go to the
larger school