been alighting for a generation or more, the drive passes to an
old-fashioned carriage-house, in which are the great family sleigh and a
light and gayly painted cutter, revealing that the home is not devoid of
the young life to which winter's most exhilarating pastime is so dear. A
quaint corn-crib is near, its mossy posts capped with inverted tin pans
much corroded by rust. These prevent prowling rats and mice from climbing
up among the golden treasures. Still further beyond are the gray old barn
and stables, facing the south. Near their doors on the sunny side of the
ample yard stand half a dozen ruminating cows, with possibly, between
their wide-branching horns, a dim consciousness of the fields, now so
white and cold, from which were cropped, in the long-past summer, far
juicier morsels than now fall to their lot. Even into their sheltered
nook the sun, far down in the south, throws but cold and watery gleams
from a steel-colored sky, and as the northern blast eddies around the
sheltering buildings the poor creatures shiver, and when their morning
airing is over are glad to return to their warm, straw-littered stalls.
Even the gallant and champion cock of the yard is chilled. With one foot
drawn up into his fluffy feathers he stands motionless in the midst of
his disconsolate harem with his eye fixed vacantly on the forbidding
outlook. His dames appear neither to miss nor to invite his attentions,
and their eyes, usually so bright and alert, often film in weary
discontent. Nature, however, is oblivious to all the dumb protests of the
barnyard, and the cold steadily strengthens.

Away on every side stretch the angular fields, outlined by fences that
are often but white, continuous mounds, and also marked by trees and
shrubs that, in their earlier life, ran the gantlet of the bush-hook.
Here and there the stones of the higher and more abrupt walls crop out,
while the board and rail fences appear strangely dwarfed by the snow that
has fallen and drifted around them. The groves and wood-crowned hills