36 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



favoured southern slopes. From long experience, we are 

 under no delusion that Winter is preparing for a hasty 

 retreat. The old fellow has several batteries of snow 

 and sleet yet to discharge, and many a skirmisher of 

 Spring will fall before the main forces come up and win 

 back our land. But these first brushes with the on- 

 coming green hosts are more fascinating than the 

 final conquest, just as the dramatic moment at Luck- 

 now was not when the relief party entered the fort, but 

 when the bagpipes first were heard, far off and faint. 



Moreover, in the earliest manifestations of Spring 

 there is an actual beauty like nothing else at any 

 season. I recall once going up by the old road over 

 October Mountain to help a neighbour drive home some 

 cows he had bought. We were forced to leave the 

 wagon at the foot, because as soon as the road left the 

 valley and began to ascend through the woods it was 

 deep with soft snow. It was a bright, clear morning 

 that might have been in midwinter, we thought as 

 we plodded up, save that the brook was running free of 

 ice, we tramped without our sweaters, and in the bare 

 woods the chickadees were fluttering silently. In mid- 

 winter they would all have been close to our dwellings. 

 But when we drove down the cows at two o'clock, the 

 scene was transformed. We splashed along through 

 water, for the two runner ruts in the road were now little 

 silver brooks, flashing and dancing in the sun. The 

 battle was on, and the first victory had gone to Spring! 



