Footprints on the Snow. 17 



Alas ! then, for the belated shepherd on the moor, 

 seeking vainly to recover the lost track. When the 

 wind seems like some cruel demon, buffeting, blinding, 

 maddening, as by ways rendered unfamiliar with the 

 drifts he plunges along helpless, hopeless j fainter and 

 more faint, until at last there comes the awful moment 

 when he can fight no longer, and he sinks powerless 

 down, down into the soft and fatal depths. The drift 

 sweeps over him. He is lost as surely as ' some strong 

 swimmer in his agony' who sinks in mid- Atlantic 

 among the boiling surge. 



Wonderful, too, is the snow that falls in the still 

 weather, fair and even; that with more deliberate 

 touches, brushed by no rough wind away, loads with 

 beauty all the bending trees. Snow that, unseen and 

 unsuspected, 



..." had begun in the gloaming, 



And busily all the night, 

 Had been heaping field and highway 



With a silence deep and white." 



" Every fir, and pine, and hemlock, 

 Wore ermine too dear for an earl ; 

 And the poorest twig on the elm tree 

 Was ridged inch-deep with pearl." 



And then before the dawn was clear, ere yet the light 

 of sunrise lent a rosy flush to the hills and hollows of 

 the whitened world, how the creatures of the wild have 

 hastened to trace their names upon the glittering sur- 

 face ! 



Some beasts there are that never leave a footprint 



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