WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



through blustering winds and thickly flying snow. 

 As, with bent head, I force my way into the fields, 

 the air about me is full of light, and nearer objects 

 are clear enough, but at a comparatively short 

 distance little can be seen distinctly, although 

 the white light seems continuous ; and the receding 

 town becomes more and more a beautiful, shining 

 ghost of architecture — washed-in flat, as painters 

 would say, with luminous tints gradually fading 

 away to nothing, yet never losing transparency. 



At first nothing is perceptible but the deafening 

 gale and smothering snow, until presently I come 

 to a ravine on the leeward side of a hill, where a 

 grove of cedars is overgrown and tied together 

 with squirrel-brier, while weeds and thorny bushes 

 below are tangled into almost impenetrable thickets. 

 Here is a hospice for the buffeted birds, and as 

 soon as I step into its shelter, and catch my breath 

 again, I begin to hear dozens of them, though 

 not one is yet to be seen. Another plunge forward 

 in the slippery drifts, and lo ! a robin bursts out of 

 a leafy covert at my elbow, scattering wingfuls of 

 snow from the brittle old leaves, and springing 

 a harsh alarm that instantly hushes the twittering 

 gossip. 



What a queer, pretty picture it is that greets 



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