of 



numbing here with a power for death that the ther- 

 mometer could not mark. I backed into the wind 

 and hastened on toward the double line of elms that 

 arched the road in front of the house. Already I 

 could hear them creak and rattle like things of glass. 

 It was not the sound of life. Nothing was alive ; for 

 what could live in this long darkness and fearful cold ? 



Could live? The question was hardly thought, 

 when an answer was whirled past me into the near- 

 est of the naked elms. A chickadee ! He caught for 

 an instant on a dead limb over the road, scrambled 

 along to its broken tip, and whisked over into a hole 

 that ran straight down the centre of the stub, down, 

 for I don't know how far. 



I stopped. The stub lay out upon the wind, with only 

 an eddy of the gale sucking at the little round hole in 

 the broken end, while far down in its hollow heart, 

 huddling himself into a downy, dozy ball for the night, 

 was the chickadee. I know by the very way he struck 

 the limb and turned in that he had been there before. 

 He knew whither, across the sweeping meadows, he 

 was being blown. He had even helped the winds as 

 they whirled him, for he had tarried along the roads 

 till late. But he was safe for the night now, in the 



76 



