THE "CONY" 119 



in bloom, the saxifrage and a solitary aster (April 

 and September together !) blossoming in the edges of 

 the snow just as fast as the melting banks allowed 

 them to lift their heads. But any day the wind might 

 come down from the north, keen and thick and white 

 about the summits, and leave the flowers and the cony 

 slide covered deep beneath a drift. 



Spring, summer, and autumn are all one season, 

 all crowded together a kind of peak piercing for 

 a few short weeks the long, bleak, unbroken land of 

 winter here on the roof of the world. 



But during this brief period the thin grass springs 

 up, and the conies cut and cure it, enough of it to last 

 them from the falling of the September snows until 

 the drifts are once more melted and their rock-slide 

 warms in another summer's sun. 



For the cony does not hibernate. He stays awake 

 down in his catacombs. Think of being buried alive 

 in pitch-black night with snow twenty-five feet thick 

 above you for nine out of twelve months of the 

 year ! Yet here they are away up on the sides of the 

 wildest summits, living their lives, keeping their 

 houses, rearing their children, visiting back and forth 

 through their subways for all this long winter, pro- 

 tected by the drifts which lie so deep that they keep 

 out the cold. 



As I looked about me I could not see grass enough 

 to feed a pair of conies for a winter. Right near me 

 was one of their little haycocks, nearly cured and 



