aid. "You watch here at the window."

He got a brick and, pulling the old wardrobe aside, flung it down the
stairs and yelled. Instantly there was a clatter below, and out from the
hole under the sill bounded a big black animal, evidently a bear, and
loped away through the snow.

We could now pretty well account for the nocturnal uproar. Bears
hibernate in winter, but are often out until the first snows come. The
storm had probably surprised this one while he was still roaming about,
and he had hastily searched for a den.

The storm had abated, and we decided to start for Lovell at once. We
gave the sheep a foddering of hay and then got the flock outdoors. Old
Peg was very loath to leave the barn, and we had to drag her out by main
strength. Addison went ahead and tramped a path in the deep snow.
Finding that there was no help for it, Old Peg followed, and the flock
trailed after her in a woolly file several hundred feet long.
Flourishing my stick and shouting loudly, I urged on the rear of the
procession.

In less than half an hour we met the old Squire with the team and two
men from the Morey farm. The old gentleman had arrived there about six
o'clock the night before and had been worried as to what had become of
us. He must have passed the place where Old Peg had bolted up the road
not long after we were there; but it was already so dark that he had not
seen our snow-covered tracks.

"Well, well, boys, you must have had a hard time of it!" were his first
words. "Where did you pass the night?"

"At the old Cronin farm, I guess," Addison replied.

"That lonesome place!" the old Squire exclaimed.

"It _was_ slightly lonesome," Addison admitted dryly.

"Did you see a ghost?" one of the men asked with a grin.

"Not a white one," Addison replied. "But we saw something pretty big and
black. There were owls in the chimney and foxes in the cellar--also a
bear. I guess that's all the ghost there is. But there's a hay bill for
somebody to pay; about three hundredweight, I think."

From there on, with the men to help us, we made better progress, and
before noon we had delivered the flock to its new owner. The warm dinner
that we ate at the Morey farm tasted mighty good to Addison and me.

We never saw Peg again; but before the winter had passed, the old Squire
bought another small flock of sheep from a neighbor.

CHAPTER XXXIII

WITCHES' BROOMS

The school committee finally decided that Master Brench's