He seized it on one side, I on the other, and between us we quickly stood that heavy piece of furniture up against the dark opening. Then, while I held it in place, Addison propped it fast with the door from the foot of the chamber stairs, which with one wrench he tore from its hinges. It was evidently foxes, or bears, or both; but how they had got into the cellar was not clear. We started the fire blazing again and, standing in front of it, listened to the uproar. At times we heard yelps in the storm outside, at the back of the house, and decided that there must be some other way than the stairs of getting into the cellar. After a while it began to grow light. Snow was still falling, but not so fast. The commotion below had quieted, but we heard a fox barking outside and from the back window caught sight of the animal moving about in the snow, holding up first one foot then another. Farther away, among the bushes of the clearing, stood another fox; and, still farther off in the woods, a third was barking querulously. Tracks in the snow led to a large hole under the sill of the house where a part of the cellar wall had caved in. "But there's a bear or some other large animal down cellar," Addison said. "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.