emptied into the pond at the place where Jonas and Oliver had cleared
land, when Jonas first came to live on this farm.

It was a very pleasant road. The brook was visible here and there
through the bushes and trees on one side of it. These bushes and trees
were of course bare of leaves, excepting the evergreens, and they were
loaded down with the snow. Some were bent over so that the tops nearly
touched the ground.

The brook itself, too, was almost buried and concealed in the snow. In
the still places, it had frozen over; and so the snow had been supported
by the ice, and thus it concealed both ice and water. At the little
cascades and waterfalls, however, which occurred here and there, the
water had not frozen. Water does not freeze easily where it runs with
great velocity. At these places, therefore, the boys could see the
water, and hear it bubbling and gurgling as it fell, and disappeared
under the ice which had formed below.

At last, they came to the wood lot. The wood which they were going to
haul had been cut before, and it had been piled up in long piles,
extending here and there under the trees which had been left. These
piles were now, however, partly covered with the snow, which lay light
and unsullied all over the surface of the ground.

The sticks of wood in these piles were of different sizes, though they
were all of the same length. Some had been cut from the tops of the
trees, or from the branches, and were, consequently, small in diameter;
others were from the trunks, which would, of course, make large logs.
These logs had, however, been split into quarters by a beetle and
wedges, when the wood had been prepared, so that there were very few