hours late, and dense clouds of steam from locomotive funnels condense
into vivid whiteness in the wintry air. Nuthatches, woodpeckers, and
chickadees join the English sparrows in begging crumbs and scraps
around the kitchen door. In the timber the wind rustles shiveringly
through the leaves which still cling to some of the oaks. The music of
the woods is reduced to a minimum. Life is a serious business for
everyone who has to work in order that he may eat; there is little
time or spirit for song. In the late forenoon and again in the middle
of the afternoon the rattle of bills may be heard on the branches; at
other times the woods are almost silent, save for the cracking of the
earth as it heaves under the frost, and the boom of the ever
thickening ice on the river.

* * * * *

Then the south wind steals across King Winter's borderland, and the
iron clouds begin to relax. But at first there seems little
improvement. "The south end of a north wind," say the experienced, and
shiver. But wait. Every hour the wind grows warmer and the clouds
softer. They come closer to the earth, hanging like a thick curtain
across the sky. On the prairie the diameter of the circling horizon
seems scarcely three miles long. The clouds hug the far sides of the
nearest ridges and shut you in, above and around. It must have been
such a day as this when Fitzgerald made that line of the Rubaiyat
read: "And this inverted bowl they call the sky." Today the bowl seems
very small and dreary.

* * * * *

By and by a snowflake falls, then a few others, soft as the spray of