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.
Thirty or forty yards farther along the road stood a low, dark house,
with the door hanging awry and half the glass in the two front windows
broken. Evidently it was a deserted farm. From appearances, no one had
lived there for years. But some one had stored a quantity of hay in the
mow beside the barn floor; the sheep were already nibbling at it.
"I don't know whose hay this is," Addison said, "but the sheep must be
fed. The old Squire or Mr.
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