inverted spears of unequal lengths, hung the argent icicles. No;
not spun silver all this, but glass; all things buried, not under a
tide of liquid silver, but of flowing and then cooling glass:
Nature for once turned into a glass house, fixed in a brittle mass,
nowhere bending or swaying; but if handled roughly, sure to be
shivered.

The ground under every tree in the yard was strewn with boughs;
what must be the ruin of the woods whence the noises had reached
him in the night? Looking out of his window now, he could see
enough to let him understand the havoc, the wreckage.

He went at once to the stable for the feeding and found everything
strangely quiet--the stilling influence of a great frost on animal
life. There had been excitement and uneasiness enough during the
night; now ensued the reaction, for man is but one of the many
animals with nerves and moods. A catastrophe like this which covers
with ice the earth--grass, winter edible twig and leaf, roots and
nuts for the brute kind that turns the soil with the nose, such
putting of all food whatsoever out of reach of mouth or hoof or
snout--brings these creatures face to face with the possibility of
starving: they know it and are silent with apprehension of their
peril; know it perhaps by the survival of prehistoric memories
reverberating as instinct still. And there is another possible
prong of truth to this repression of their characteristic cries at
such times of frost: then it was in ages past that the species
which preyed on them grew most ravenous and far ranging. The
silence of the modern stable in a way takes the place of that
primeval silence which was a law of safety in the bleak fastnesses,
hunted over by flesh eating prowlers. It is the prudent