The storm did not reach us until nearly eleven o'clock, however; we had got as far as the town of Albany before the first flakes began to fall. Then Old Peg made trouble. Leaving the barn and going off so far was against all her ideas of propriety, and now that a snowstorm had set in she was certain that something or other was wrong. She looked this way and that, sometimes turning completely round to look at the road. Presently she made a bolt off to the left and, jumping a stone wall, tried to circle back through a field. Part of the flock immediately followed, and we had a lively race to head her off and start her along the road again. Addison abandoned the salt dish,--it was no longer attractive to the sheep,--and helped me to drive the flock. At every cross road Peg seemed bent on taking the wrong turn. In spite of the cold she kept us in a perspiration, and we did not have time even to eat the luncheon that we had brought in our pockets. Old Peg's one idea was to lead the flock home to the old farm. By hard work we kept the sheep going in the right direction until after three o'clock in the afternoon. By that time four or five inches of snow had fallen. It whitened the whole country and loaded the fleeces of the sheep. The flock had begun to lag, and the younger sheep were bleating plaintively. We were getting worried, for the storm was increasing, and as nearly as Addison could remember we had six miles farther to go. It would soon be night; the forests that here bordered the road were darkening already. We had no idea how we should get the flock on after dark. Old Peg soon took the matter out of our hands. She had been plodding on moodily at the head of her large family for half an hour or more, and coming at length to a dim cross road that entered the highway from the woods on the north side, she turned and started up it at a headlong run. How she ran! And how the flock streamed after her! How we ran, too, to head her off and turn her back! Addison dashed out to one side of the narrow forest road and I to the other. But there was brush and swamp on both sides. Neither of us could catch up with Old Peg. Stumbling through the snowy thickets, we tried to get past her half a dozen times, but she still kept ahead. She must have gone a mile. When she at last emerged into an opening, we saw, looming dimly through the storm and the fast-gathering dusk, a large, weathered barn, with its great doors standing open. "Well, let her go, confound her!" Addison exclaimed, panting. Quite out of breath, we gave up the chase and fell behind. Old Peg never stopped until she was inside that barn. When we caught up with the rout, she had her flock about her on the barn floor. "Perhaps it's just as well to let them stay overnight here," Addison said after we had looked round.