A SNOW-STORM. 103 



gree. The foot sped through it without hindrance. 

 I fancied the grouse and quails quietly sitting down 

 in the open places, and letting it drift over them. 

 With head under wing and wing snugly folded they 

 would he softly and tenderly buried in a few mo- 

 ments. The mice and the squirrels were in their 

 dens, but I fancied the fox asleep upon some rock or 

 log, and allowing the flakes to cover him. The hare 

 in her form, too, was being warmly sepulchred with 

 the rest. I thought of the young cattle and the sheep 

 huddled together on the lee side of a haystack in 

 some remote field, all enveloped in mantles of white. 



" I thought me on the ourie cattle, 

 Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 



O* wintry war, 

 Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, 



Beneath a scaur. 



" Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, 

 That in the merry months o' spring 

 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 



What comes o' thee? 

 Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, 



And close thy ee? " 



As I passed the creek I noticed the white woolly 

 masses that filled the water. It was as if somebody 

 up stream had been washing his sheep and the water 

 had carried away all the wool, and I thought of the 

 Psalmist's phrase, " He giveth snow like wool." On 

 the river a heavy fall of snow simulates a thin layer 

 of cotton batting. The tide drifts it along, and where 

 it meets with an obstruction along shore, it folds up 



