172 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



V tween the trees down to the valley below and up 



its further side till the gaze touched the sky on 

 the distant blue summit of Haystack. It was 

 easy to note with what feathers and fur the earth 

 keeps herself warm in the fierce cold of Vermont 

 winters. In the distance the black growth of 

 evergreen spruce and hemlock would hardly let 

 the roughest gale pass within. Where these do 

 not stand interwoven the misty mingling of the 

 twigs of deciduous trees made a cloak that was 

 softly beautiful to the eye yet hardly less pene- 

 trable, and over all the cleared spaces and under 

 all other protection was the white ermine of the 

 snow. The March sun and the thawing rains of 

 approaching spring had settled this snow ermine 

 closer to the ground, indeed, but had only 

 compacted it more firmly. A foot or more of it 

 was everywhere and you could plunge to the 

 shoulders in the drifts. 



Soon the gathering barrel was full and the horse 

 plodded back to the sugar house, where from the 

 hillside the sap ran into the sapholder, a twenty- 

 one barrel cask propped up within, thence to go 

 by gravity through a tube to the pan. Here the 



