Hurrying back to the wagon, he got two loaves of bread, and ran ahead with them to Herbert. The famished turkeys seemed to know what he carried, and broke into a run after him. For half a mile they kept up the gait, as both boys, trotting along the road, dropped pieces of bread on the snow. Then the whole game had to be repeated; for the greater part of the flock, falling hopelessly behind, soon forgot what they were running after, and began to cry, “_Quint! quint! quint!_”--the roosting-cry! So, starting again in the rear with the bread, George carried the last of the flock forward for another good run. “We should win this game,” Herbert panted, “if we only had loaves enough to make a few more touch-downs.” “There’s half an hour yet to play,” was George’s answer. “But what on?” “Oh, on our nerve now,” the older boy replied grimly. “That railroad is not far ahead,” said Herbert. “Half an hour ahead. We’ve got to camp by that track to-night or--” “Or what?” But George had turned to help the dog head off some runaways. Herbert, picking up a lump of frozen leaves and snow, began to break this in front of the flock to tole them on. He had hardly started the birds again, when a long-legged gobbler brushed past him and went swinging down the road, calling, “_Quint! quint! quint!_” to the flock behind. The call was taken up and passed along the now extended line, which, breaking immediately into double-quick, went streaming after him. Herbert got out of the way to let them pass, too astonished for a moment to do more than watch them go. It was the roosting-cry! An old gobbler had given it; but as it was taking him, for once, in the right direction, Herbert ordered back the dog that had dashed forward to head him off, and fell in with George to help on the stragglers in the rear. As the laggards were brought up to a slight rise in the road, the flock was seen a hundred yards ahead, gathered in a dark mass about a telegraph-pole! It could be nothing else, for through the whirling snow the big cross-arms stood out, dim but unmistakable. It was this that the gobbler had spied and started for, this sawed and squared piece of timber, that had suggested a barnyard to him,--corn and roost,--as to the boys it meant a human presence in the forest and something like human companionship. It was after four o’clock now, and the night was hard upon them. The wind was strengthening every minute; the snow was coming finer and swifter. The boys’ worst fears about the storm were beginning to be realized.