correspondingly lean and cheerless. You see it 

 in their heavy, dispirited flight ; all their spring 

 joyousness is gone ; they pass over silent and 

 somber, reluctant to leave the fields, and fearful 

 of the night. There is not a croak as they settle 

 among the pines scores, sometimes hundreds of 

 them, in a single tree. 



Here, in the swaying tops, amid the heavy 

 roar of the winds, they sleep. You need have 

 no fear of waking them as you steal through the 

 shadows beneath the trees. The thick mat of 

 needles or the sifted snow muffles your footfalls ; 

 and the winds still the breaking branches and 

 snapping twigs. What a bed in a winter storm ! 

 The sky is just light enough for you to distinguish 

 the dim outlines of the sleepers as they rock in 

 the waves of the dark green that rise and fall 

 above you ; the trees moan, the branches shiver 

 and creak, and high above all, around and be- 

 neath you, filling the recesses of the dark wo od 

 rolls the volume of the storm. 



But the crows sleep on, however high the 



winds. They sit close to the branches, that the 



feathers may cover their clinging feet; they 



tuck their heads beneath their wing-coverts, 



[40] 



