A YEAR IN THE FIELDS 



more or less noisy and loquacious. About 

 noon a thin white veil began to blur the 

 distant southern mountains. It was like a 

 white dream slowly descending upon them. 

 The first flake or flakelet that reached me 

 was a mere white speck that came idly cir- 

 cling and eddying to the ground. I could 

 not see it after it alighted. It might have 

 been a scale from the feather of some pass- 

 ing bird, or a larger mote in the air that the 

 stillness was allowing to settle. Yet it was 

 the altogether inaudible and infinitesimal 

 trumpeter that announced the coming storm, 

 the grain of sand that heralded the desert. 

 Presently another fell, then another ; the 

 white mist was creeping up the river valley. 

 How slowly and loiteringly it came, and how 

 microscopic its first siftings ! 



This mill is bolting its flour very fine, you 

 think. But wait a little ; it gets coarser by 

 and by ; you begin to see the flakes ; they 

 increase in numbers and in size, and before 

 one o'clock it is snowing steadily. The 

 flakes come straight down, but in a half 

 hour they have a marked slant toward the 

 north ; the wind is taking a hand in the 

 game. By mid-afternoon the storm is com- 

 ing in regular pulse-beats or in vertical 

 4 



