THE COHORTS OF THE FROST 23 



side fence, or so much of the fence as is visible above the 

 drifts often only the top rail. There is no sun, only a 

 patch of misty radiance in a white sky. The blown 

 snow is scurrying in clouds over the pastures, half 

 obscuring the rusty wall of woods beyond. Up the 

 road ahead of me it swirls, and it comes pushing behind, 

 hastening my footsteps and stinging my face when I 

 turn about. Now I am that little boy again and feel the 

 tingling joy of ploughing along before the wind, of 

 kicking through the drifts, of racing ahead to catch the 

 runner of a pung, perhaps, or of fighting my way home 

 again with my face wrapped to the eyes in my woollen 

 muffler that supreme joy of contending with ele- 

 mental Nature when she demands of you your utmost. 

 Since that little boy blew down the road before the 

 wind, between the dark cedars, in a snowstorm which 

 rose from the ground, he has watched many a snow 

 descend upon a great city, there to blacken and melt and 

 finally to be carted ignominiously off and dumped in the 

 river. It would begin to fall, perhaps, hi the evening, 

 misting the lamps that blaze along Broadway and swirl- 

 ing in under sidewalk canopies to powder the hair of the 

 jewelled women who were alighting from their car- 

 riages and scurrying across the walk to the theatre en- 

 trance. In the morning the sun would rise over a city 

 transformed. The stark trees in the park would throw 

 out black limbs outlined beneath a white capping; in 

 Madison Square, Esquimaux igloos would rise in the 



