the ground-spruce nodded briskly, beating time with their green
tips, as if glad of any sound or music that would break the chill
silence until the birds came back.

Here and there the snow told stories; gay stories, tragic
stories, sad, wandering, patient stories of the little
woods-people, which the frost had hardened into crust, as if
Nature would keep their memorials forever, like the records on
the sunhardened bricks of Babylon. But would the deer live? Would
the big buck's cunning provide a yard large enough for wide
wandering, with plenty of browse along the paths to carry his
flock safely through the winter's hunger? That was a story,
waiting somewhere ahead, which made me hurry away from the
foot-written records that otherwise would have kept me busy for
hours.

Crossbills called welcome to me, high overhead. Nothing can
starve them out. A red squirrel rushed headlong out of his hollow
tree at the first click of my snowshoes. Nothing can check his
curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the
weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me
shyly with their blandishments--tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle
up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are--are
you a harbinger?"

But the snowshoes clicked on, away from the sweet blarney,
Leaving behind the little flatterers who were honestly glad to
see me in the woods again, and who would fain have delayed me.
Other questions, stern ones, were calling ahead. Would the cur
dogs find the yard and exterminate the innocents? Would Old