PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 265 



"March 17. Lovely day, very warm. Felt 

 inclined to sit on the stable roof among the sheaves 

 and read, but cleaned the cow stable and stuck to 

 my guns generally. Found a stolen nest with 

 fourteen eggs. 



"March 18. Awoke to a terrible morning. 

 Blinding blizzard and heavy snowdrifts here and 

 there. 



"March 19. Bright fair day with very cold 

 north wind, bnt snow melting in the sun, which 

 cancels a good deal of anxiety about the beasts. 

 The well has gone well through the winter, but 

 now there is trouble. I most carelessly left it 

 uncovered and the snow got in. Mr. Robb came 

 over to ask me to exchange cockerels for hens for 

 his daughter's wedding-breakfast. He mended my 

 stove-pipe, for which I was most truly thankful." 



But in March, although storms may blow, the 

 warm rays of the sun pierce the clouds in the inter- 

 vals of the warfare of the elements and the snow 

 melts at its magic. Towards the end of the winter 

 my task of watering the stock had become a severe 

 test of patience. The spring still flowed as generously 

 as before, but the ice at the base of the wooden 

 casing had thickened, and the water gathered daily 

 in the ice-basin. Sometimes one pail took six 

 journeys to fill its comrade, and occasionally two 

 horses would attack the half-filled pail and spill the 

 hard- won water. Often exasperation got the better 

 of reason on such occasions, and one realized how 

 easy it might be to become brute-like in the service 

 of the very brutes that make life so well worth living, 

 and when one got back again to the precincts of the 



