WINTRY WATERS 131 



or floating midway between the parapet and the stream. 

 These children of the frost became the pets of the 

 river-side population, and bread cast from the bridges 

 was the signal for a rush of white wings, and a dainty 

 dipping of feet into the water as the birds gathered up 

 the food, fearful, like Kingsley's petrels, that the ice 

 should nip their toes. If a larger portion than common 

 fell on an ice-floe, the birds would settle on the floating 

 mass, with wings beating backwards like white butter- 

 flies, and guests, feast, and table alike travel up the 

 river with the tide. 



The scene beneath the bridges serves to remind us 

 that it is not on the frozen pools, but upon the still open 

 and running streams that the spell of the frost exerts 

 its most pleasing powers. There it adds as much new 

 life and novel form as on the still waters it destroys. It 

 is hard to believe that the same powers have been at 

 work on both. On the ponds and meres and slow 

 streams the frost lays its hand and seals them like a 

 tomb. As the ice-lips meet on the frozen bank, and 

 nip the rushes fast, every creature that lived upon the 

 surface is shut out and exiled. The moorhens and 

 dabchicks are frozen into the ice, or leave for the run- 

 ning streams and ditches ; the water-rats desert the 

 banks, the wild-ducks have long gone, and only the 

 tiny wren creeps among the sedges, or shuffles miserably 

 among the bulrush stems. Even the fish are fast 

 frozen into the ice, in which their bright sides shine 

 like the golden carp on a tray of Chinese lac. Motion 

 has ceased, and, with motion, sound, except that which 



