SNOWED IN 



&quot; But we don t want to.&quot; Then a new thought 

 occurred to him. &quot; If it should snow all night, 

 it might freeze, and then we could make snow- 

 shoes, and go out on the crust.&quot; 



&quot; Yes, if it only would, that would be some 

 comfort. Nobody can get to us from the farm 

 house if this continues for two hours.&quot; 



&quot; Griselle will come over sure. She likes the 

 snow, and Gabe has got a jumper. She promised 

 me a straw-ride as soon as the snow came.&quot; 



&quot; I m afraid that she has changed her mind, 

 Comrade.&quot; 



There was some kind of fascination in the fall 

 ing flakes. We stood there and watched them 

 with an indescribable interest. The moment we 

 stopped talking, the stillness of it all seemed pal 

 pable, and the silent spectacle of motion without 

 sound was suggestive to me of unmeasured forces 

 that I had not been in the habit of estimating. 

 So thick were the flakes that the prospect through 

 the trees was completely veiled fifty feet away. 

 Alt that we could see were myriad fluttering crys 

 tals near at hand as they crossed the dark trunks, 

 and the occasional bend of a cedar branch to 

 empty its load softly upon the ground. 



To stand still and watch the snow-storm with a 

 wondering restfulness, and to acknowledge that 

 there was in its silence some kind of inscrutable 

 beneficence, had not been possible for me a year 

 before. It had in it, in spite of myself, a dumb 

 soft reminder of being once more covered up and 

 tucked in, without words, by protective hands. 



295 



