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; there they are!" And who should come through the cedars but the old Squire! A little behind him was Tom's father.
On account of the severity of the weather both families had been much alarmed when we failed to come home the night before. Making an early start that morning, Mr. Edwards and the old Squire had driven to the Silver farm and, leaving their team there, had followed the town line in search of us. On reaching Wild Brook they had seen that the snow bridge had fallen, and at first they had been badly frightened. On looking round, however, they had found the marks of our boot heels on the frozen snow, heading up-stream, and had immediately guessed that we had gone to the old camp. So we had their company on the way home; and much astonished both of them were at the sight of so many geese.