136 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



bushes bright with red Christmas berries, 

 and blueberry bushes scarcely less bright 

 with red leaves. Sometimes it was neces- 

 sary to put up an opera-glass before I could 

 tell one from the other. Here was a marshy 

 spot ; dry, shivering sedges standing above 

 the ice, and among them four or five mud- 

 built domes of muskrat houses. Shrewd 

 muskrats ! They knew better than to be 

 stirring abroad on a day like this. " If you 

 have n't a house, why don't you build one ? " 

 they might have said to the man hurrying 

 past, with his neck drawn down into his 

 coat collar. Here I skirted a purple cran- 

 berry bog, having tufts of dwarfed, stubby 

 bayberry bushes scattered over it, each with 

 its winter crop of pale-blue, densely packed, 

 tightly held berry clusters. 



Not a flower ; not a bird. Not so much 

 as a crow or a robin in one of the stunted 

 savin trees. I remembered winter days here, 

 a dozen years ago, when the alder clumps 

 were lively with tree sparrows, myrtle war- 

 blers, and goldfinches. Now the whole penin- 

 sula was a place forsaken. I had better 

 have stayed away myself. Here, as so often 

 elsewhere, memory was the better sight. 



