m up. Now and then he straightened
up, flapped his wings and squalled dolorously. None of the others I
noticed flapped, stirred or made any movement whatever. They looked as
if they were asleep, and many of them had their heads under their wings.

At last I went out toward them on the new ice, which had now frozen
solid enough to bear me. The gander rose in the air and circled
overhead, squalling fearfully. On going nearer, I saw that all those
geese were frozen in, and that they were dead; the entire flock, except
that one powerful old gander, had perished there. They were frozen in
the ice so firmly that I could not pull them out; in fact, I could
scarcely bend the necks of those that had tucked them under their wings.
I counted forty-one of them besides the gander.

While I was looking them over, Tom and Addison appeared on the shore.
They had waked and missed me, but, hearing the gander, had guessed that
I had gone to the pond. Both were astonished and could hardly believe
their eyes till they came out where I stood and tried to lift the geese.

"We shall have to chop them out with the axe!" Tom exclaimed. "By jingo,
boys, here's goose feathers enough to make two feather beds and pillows
to boot."

The gander, still squalling, circled over us again.

"The old fellow feels bad," Addison remarked. "He has lost his whole big
family."

We decided that the geese on their way north had been out in the
rainstorm, and that when the weather cleared and turned cold so
suddenly, with snow squalls, they had become bewildered, perhaps, and
had descended on the pond. The cold wave was so sharp that, being quite
without food, they had frozen into the ice and perished there.

"Well, old boy," Tom said, addressing the gander that now stood flapping
his wings at us a few hundred feet away, "you've lost your women-folks.
We may as well have them as the bobcats."

He fetched the axe, and we cut away the ice round the geese and then
carried six loads of them down to camp.

If we had had any proper means of preparing a goose we should certainly
have put one to bake in the stove oven; for all three of us were hungry.
As it was, Addison said we had better make a scoot, load the geese on
it, and take the nearest way home. We had only the axe and our
jackknives to work with, and it was nine o'clock before we had built a
rude sled and loaded the geese on it.

As we were about to start we heard a familiar voice cry, "Well, well;
th