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 adventure; we then proceeded homeward together, and were in time for Gram's Thanksgiving dinner at three o'clock, for which it is needless to say that we brought large appetites. But I recall that the pleasures of the table for me were somewhat marred by my feet which continued to ache and burn painfully for two or three hours. There was a snowdrift six feet in depth before the farmhouse piazza. The drifts indeed had so changed the appearance of things around the house and yard that everything looked quite strange to me. None of the guests, whom we had expected to dinner, came, on account of the storm; but a rumor of our adventure at the logging-camp had spread through the neighborhood; and at night, after the road had been "broken" with oxen, sled and harrow, Ned Wilbur and his sisters, the Murch boys, and also Tom and Catherine, called to pass the evening. Perhaps the snow storm with its bewildering whiteness had turned our heads a little. That, or something else, started us off, making rhymes. After great efforts, amidst much laughter and profound knitting of brows, we produced what, in the innocence of youth, we called a poem!--an epic, on our adventure. I still preserve the old scrawl of it, in several different youthful hands, on crumpled sheets of yellowed paper. It has little value as poesy, but I would not part with it for autograph copies of the masterpieces of Kipling, or Aldrich. It must have been akin to snow-madness, for I remember that Thomas who never attempted a line of poetry before, nor since, led off with the following stanzas:-- "Four boys went off to look for sheep, Co'day, co'day, co'nanny, co'nan. And the trouble they had would make you weep, Co'day, co'day, co'nanny, co'nan. "They searched the pasture high and low, Then to Dunham's Open they tried to go. But the sky was dark and the wind did blow And the woods was dim with whirling snow.