was not till daylight, however, that we fully realized how narrowly
we had escaped death. A great tree trunk had fallen on each side of the
camp, so near as to brush the eaves of the low roof. Dry stubs of
branches were driven deep into the frozen earth. Either trunk would have
crushed the old camp like an eggshell! The pine stub was splintered and
split by its fall. There was barely the width of the camp between the
two trunks, as they lay there prone and grim, in the drifted snow.

The gale slackened shortly after sunrise and the storm cleared in part;
although snow still spit spitefully till as late as ten o'clock.

"What a Thanksgiving-day!" grumbled Halse.

After a time we started for home, leaving the little bear shut up. As
much as two feet of snow had fallen on a level and the drifts in the
hollows were much deeper. It was my first experience of the great snow
storms of Maine; my legs soon ached with wallowing, and my feet were
distressingly cold.

Our homeward progress was slow; none the less, Tom and Addison decided
to go to Dunham's open, which was nearly a mile off our direct course,
to look for the sheep. Now that it was light, they knew the way. Halse
refused to go; and as my legs ached badly, he and I remained under a
large fir tree beside the path, the fan-shaped branches of which, like
all the other evergreens, were encrusted and loaded down by a white
canopy.

Addison and Thomas set off and were gone for more than an hour, but had
a large story to tell when they rejoined us. Not only had they found the
flock, snowbound, in Dunham's open, but had seen two deer which had
joined the sheep during the storm. The whole flock was in a copse of
firs, in the lee of the woods; and two loup-cerviers were sneaking about
near by. Thomas declared that their tracks were as large as his hand;
and Addison said that they had trodden a path in a semicircle around the
flock.

We resumed our wallowing way home, but erelong heard a distant shout.
Addison replied and immediately we saw two men a long way off in the
sheep pasture, advancing to meet us.

"I expect that one of them is my good dad," Thomas remarked dryly. "If I
know my mother, she has been worrying about this cub of hers all night."

It proved to be farmer Edwards, as Tom had surmised, and with him the
Old Squire, himself.

"Well, well, well, boys, where have you been all night?" was their first
salutation to us.

Addison gave a brief account of our