DANVIS FARM LIFE 53 



for an intermixture of crooked and knotty sticks, 

 — devices well known to professional choppers for 

 making piles measure large, — a charge which the 

 Canadian repels with loud protestations of hon- 

 esty and frantic gestures, or pretends not to un- 

 derstand. His sled laden, the farmer leaves the 

 regicide to his slaughter and wends his creaking 

 way homeward along the gray-pillared arcade of 

 the narrow, winding wood-road, whose brushy 

 border scrapes and clatters against the jagged load 

 as it passes. This and the mufl3ed tread of the 

 horses and the creaking of the runners in the snow, 

 the fainter-growing axe-strokes, and now and 

 then the booming downfall of a great tree, are the 

 few sounds that break the winter stillness of the 

 woods. The partridge looks down on him from its 

 safe perch in the thick-branched hemlock. A hare 

 bounds across the road before him, as white and 

 silent as the snow beneath its feet. An unseen fox 

 steals away with noiseless footsteps. Driving out 

 of the sheltering woods into the wind-swept fields, 

 here through deep-drifted hollows, there over 

 ridges blown so nearly bare that the bleached grass 

 rustles above the thin snow, he fares homeward, 

 or to the well-beaten highway, and by it to the 

 market in the village or at the railroad. 



He is apt to tarry long at the village store, un- 

 der the plausible pretext of getting thoroughly 

 warm, and likely enough gossips with neighbors 



