cession of crows beat on toward the trees. 

 Presently there was a small stir within the 

 corn-shock. I laid my ear to the stalks and 

 listened. Mice ! I could hear them moving 

 around in there. It was with relief that I felt 

 that here, at least, was a little people whom 

 the cold and night could not hurt. 



These mice were as warmly sheltered inside 

 this great shock as I should be in my furnace- 

 warmed home. Their tiny nests of corn-silk, 

 hidden away, perhaps, within the stiff, empty 

 husks at the shock's very center, could never 

 be wet by a drop of the most driving rain nor 

 reached by the most searching frosts. And not 

 a mouse of them feared starvation. A plenty 

 of nubbins had been left from the husking, and 

 they would have corn for the shelling far into the 

 spring if the fodder and their homes should be 

 left to them so long. 



I floundered on toward home. In the gather- 

 ing night, amid the swirl of the snow, the 

 shocks seemed like spectral tents pitched up 

 and down some ghostly camp. But the specters 

 and ghosts were all with me, all out in the 

 whirling storm. The mice knew nothing of 



[23] 



