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agreed. “However, go and find him now, please.”
    “Do that, Mart,” Trixie added, “or we’ll have to start swimming. The slush down here is over my galoshes!”
    “It’s a real mess,” Brian said. “Mart!”
    Mart didn’t answer. He and Diana and Honey were on their way to get help.
     

Trixie’s Discovery • 5
     
    BACK AT THE FARM, Mr. Gorman, with the help of Tag, had succeeded in corralling the flock where they could quickly seek shelter under the thatched sheds. He had just dropped the bar to lock the gate, when Mart appeared with the two girls.
    He seemed too weary to say anything. He just whistled for Tag and started out toward the pasture again. Somewhere out there, he was sure, about twelve of his best sheep were still marooned.
    “Mr. Gorman, sir!” Mart called, and he sloshed hurriedly through the snow to where the farm manager halted, waiting for him. “Mr. Gorman,” he said breathlessly, “Trixie found the rest of the sheep!”
    “Trixie found them?” Mr. Gorman repeated.
    “In the gully. She fell in on top of them,” Mart told him, then explained.
    “The gully, of all places,” Mr. Gorman said and dropped his arms with a sigh of exhaustion. “It’ll be a night’s work to get them out of there. Where are Brian and Jim? And where’s Trixie now?”
    When Mart told him they were keeping the sheep company in the ravine, he had no comment. “You’ll have to help me,” he said. “Go over to the house, girls, and get some dry clothing. You’ll just be in the way out here,” he insisted as Honey and Diana started to follow him and Mart. “My wife is worried now about all of you. I’m sure of that,” he said. “Please go and tell her what’s going on.”
    Then, as the girls obeyed him, he said to Mart, “We’ll have to get a short ladder so they can climb out of that gully, and then we’ll have to try and get the sheep out. It’s going to take some doing.”
    Mart followed Mr. Gorman to the big barn, where the farm manager took a ladder from a hook on the wall and handed it to Mart, then found a shovel, a short-handled ax, and a bag of cracked com. “Lead the way, Mart,” he said, “if you have any idea where to go. It’s a long gully, and the sheep could have wandered into it in half a dozen places. What a night!” For the first time in many a day, Mart didn’t have a word to say. He took up his share of the strange objects Mr. Gorman had assembled and just plodded ahead.
    Back in the ravine, now that the snow had stopped, the ewes made an attempt to dry themselves. “Have a heart!” Trixie begged. “Heavens, what are you doing?” Standing well apart from one another, the ewes shook their bodies, soaking Trixie and Jim and Brian. Then, to dry their heads, they shook them so fast that nothing but a blur could be seen.
    “Poor sheep!” Trixie said, trying to keep out of the way. “What a load of water their fleece holds!”
    The combined shaking of heads and bodies sounded like distant thunder.
    “Poor sheep,” Brian imitated Trixie. “Poor us, I’d say. It’s a cloudburst!”
    “Mr. Gorman surely can’t still be cross at us when he sees the mess we’re in,” Trixie said and hugged her shoulders. “Golly, but I’m cold!”
    The farm manager, relieved to find both Bob-Whites and sheep safe, wasn’t angry at all. “Good work, Trixie!” he said. “I was afraid for a while I’d never find the rest of the sheep in time to save them.”
    “Jeepers, I didn’t do anything except stumble on to them,” Trixie said. “Tip is the one who found them. Say, Mr. Gorman, did you ever get in the way of a sheep trying to shake itself dry?”
    In spite of the strain he was under, Mr- Gorman had to laugh. “So that’s what almost drowned you.”
    “Yes,” Trixie said, trying to wring out the hem of her heavy sweater. “Mr. Gorman, we’ll never get them out of here.”
    “Oh, yes, we will!” Mr. Gorman said, and he picked up the shovel and went down the