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first.”
    “If you were a sheep in a snowstorm, where would you go?” Mart asked.
    “Isn’t he crazy?” Diana said. “He finds fun in everything.” No one else seemed to think it was time for fun.
    “Well, it isn’t a funeral, you know,” Mart said and balled some snow and threw it at Trixie, who struggled far ahead.
    “Stop fooling!” Trixie turned around to say. “It may very well be a funeral... the funeral of a lot of Uncle Andrew’s sheep. And it’s all our fault. I wish we could find Mr. Gorman.”
    “I don’t know why the dumb sheep wouldn’t stay under the shelters without having to be made to do it,” Mart said. “Is that one of the dogs barking?”
    Snuffling noisily, Tip appeared out of the curtain of thick snow. Half whining, half barking, he wiggled his wet body against Brian’s legs, then dashed off into nowhere. The Bob-Whites followed his whimpering up a hillock, their flashlights barely cutting the darkness ahead. As they topped the hill, they could discern the blurred light of Mr. Gorman’s big flash lantern.
    As the Bob-Whites appeared, Trixie leading the way, Mr. Gorman’s recognition of them was anything but cordial.
    “You’d better get right back to the house,” he said. “I have enough on my mind, trying to find the sheep. I don’t want a bunch of lost kids as well. If you turn back now, you can follow your own footprints. I’d appreciate it if you’d please go back.”
    “It’s no wonder he’s angry with us,” Trixie said under her breath to Jim. “But I’ll tell you one thing:
    I’m not going back till those sheep are found.
    “Mr. Gorman,” she called, “you haven’t located any of the sheep, have you?”
    “I haven’t,” he answered. “But Tip and Tag have. They sound as though they’ve found them in the edge of the woods over the hill.”
    “All of them?” Trixie asked.
    “How can I tell that until I catch up with them?” he asked, irritated. “You’d do me a big favor, all of you, if you’d just go on back to the house. You’ve done—”
    “I know,” Trixie said. “We’ve done enough damage for one day. The dogs seem to be heading the sheep this way, don’t they?”
    “They do. Keep out of the way, please, or you’ll be knocked over ” Mr. Gorman called as he urged the dogs out in circles to drive the sheep toward the shelter field.
    The Bob-Whites ran to one side of the milling animals as half a dozen old ewes led and the others followed, running ahead of the yapping dogs.
    “About all we seem to be able to do is to make things tougher for Mr. Gorman,” Brian said. “We might as well go back,” he added dejectedly. “Say, Jim, I can’t believe that’s all the flock, can you? Can you, Trixie? If that’s over two hundred sheep, they’re surely making better time now than they did when we put them in the shelter field.”
    “It isn’t all of them,” Trixie said, “and Tip knows it. Listen to him!”
    Tip, following Mr. Gorman’s sharp command to him and to Tag, circled the wet mass of sheep and drove them on. Now and then, however, he ran back to where the Bob-Whites waited. He jumped up to pull at Trixie’s sleeve, ran off into the blurred half-light of the snow, then ran back again to rub his wet body against Jim’s jeans.
    “That dog is trying to tell someone something,” Honey said. “Mr. Gorman and the sheep are out of hearing now. They must be near the shelter lot. Let’s see if we can follow Tip.”
    “That’s not so easy,” Diana said. “I’m soaked through.
    I don’t especially want to wander around in much more, of this snow, anyway.”
    “You come with us,” Trixie said. “You could never find your way to the house by yourself. This is fun, Di! It’s not cold at all, and who cares about getting a little bit wet?”
    “We’ve been wetter than this a thousand times, skiing and tobogganing,” Honey said. “But I honestly don’t see much sense in it myself, Trixie. Don’t you suppose Mr. Gorman