just as I can see and feel the glow when I watch the 

 slender blue wraith rise into the still air from the 

 chimney of the old farmhouse along the road below. 

 For I share in the life of both houses ; and not less 

 in the life of the mud house of the meadow, because, 

 instead of Swedes, they are muskrats who live there. 

 I can share the existence of a muskrat ? Easily. I 

 like to curl up with the three or four of them in that 

 mud house and there spend the worst days of the 

 winter. My own big house here on the hilltop is 

 sometimes cold. And the wind ! If sometimes I could 

 only drive the insistent winter wind from the house 

 corners ! But down in the meadow the house has no 

 corners ; the mud walls are thick, so thick and round 

 that the shrieking wind sweeps past unheard, and all 

 unheeded the cold creeps over and over the thatch, 

 then crawls back and stiffens upon the meadow. 



The doors of our house in the meadow swing open 

 the winter through. Just outside the doors stand our 

 stacks of fresh calamus roots, and iris, and arum. The 

 roof of the universe has settled close and hard upon 

 us, a sheet of ice extending from the ridge of the 

 house far out to the shores of the meadow. The win- 

 ter is all above the roof outside. It blows and snows 



7 



