SILVER FIELDS 7 



branch's shadow lies blue-veined upon it, every 

 mesh of twigs is netted more distinctly there than 

 the substance is against the sky, the torn bird's 

 nest and every wind-forgotten leaf are revealed 

 on the white surface. 



A winged phantom startles us gliding across the 

 silver field just before us, as swift in its flight but 

 not more noiseless than the great owl it attends. 

 Owl and shadow dissolve in the distant blue and 

 white, and presently, when this spirit of the night 

 has regained his woodland haunt, his hollow, 

 storm-foreboding hoot is heard resounding through 

 the dark aisles of the forest. 



All sounds are at one with the hour and season. 

 The snow crust cracks in long but almost imper- 

 ceptible fissures, the ice settles to the galling level 

 of the brooks and ponds with a sudden resonant 

 crash, the frozen trees snap like the ineffectual 

 primers of an ambushed foe. All are winter's 

 voices, as ancient as hoary winter's self, that only 

 emphasize the silence out of which they break. 

 The jingle of the sleigh-bells along a distant road, 

 the crunching of our footsteps, and their sharp 

 short echoes, are the only sounds that betoken 

 any human presence in all the wide glittering ex- 

 panse, with its blotches of woodland and dots of 

 sleeping farmsteads. 



We are not the first explorers here. A fox has 

 left the record of his wanderings, exaggerated like 



