28 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. 



From Wachusett on the left to the Uncanoo- 

 nucs on the right the horizon was roughened 

 by the mountains of the Monadnock group, 

 snow-crusted and flashing in the sunshine. They 

 recalled boyhood days and adventures. A race 

 from a bull on Monadnock, a moonlight climb 

 on Lyndeborough, a thunder-storm on Pinnacle, 

 a July picnic on Joe English hill. 



On the way home I saw a flock of about 

 twenty cedar-birds in the same pasture where I 

 saw them on January 25. They were cold and 

 listless, allowing me to approach them closely 

 enough to see the scarlet wax on their wing- 

 feathers. Two of them were eating barberries 

 which they picked one by one while clinging 

 head-downwards on the bending stems. The 

 robins, I learned from a fellow-observer, had 

 been seen not only that day, but every day for a 

 month, on their favorite feeding-ground. The 

 flock varies in size, he said, from twenty to fifty. 

 As I hurried along over the snow in a very 

 windy field a mouse scampered away from one 

 bunch of grasses to another and plunged into 

 his hole. His doorway was well protected by a 

 large bunch of dried grass. 



Sunday I took an early train for Readville, 

 crossed the pretty triple-arch bridge over the 

 Neponset, and climbed to the snowy crest of 

 Blue Hill. Although the hill is nearly three 



