THE SKIRMISH LINE OF SPRING 39 



at last of frost on the surface and almost too yielding 

 to the feet. The lone chestnuts or maples which senti- 

 nel such a pasture bear as yet no sign of life, though if 

 you break a twig from the maple a crystal drop of sap 

 will form, which you let fall on your tongue to taste its 

 faint sweetness. But though the maples and chestnuts 

 are bare as hi Winter, looking over to the doming slope 

 of birch forest across the ravine, where the sun hits it full 

 and warm, you catch, or think you do, the frailest 

 wraith of fuzzy colour in the treetops. It is as in- 

 tangible as a dream; a cloud dusks the sun, and it is 

 gone. Yet you are sure it is there, the birth-blush of the 

 foliage. In the upland pasture, too, on such a day, a 

 stone wall running east and west will present a curious 

 contrast, for on the northern side will lie a snowdrift, 

 still a foot or two deep, perhaps, with the snow darkened 

 by the wind-blown particles of bark and litter deposited 

 during the Winter, and melted into coarse texture like 

 rock salt; while on the southern side, beneath the dead 

 stalks of last year's mulleins, milkweed, and golden-rod, 

 the ground will be quite dry for several feet out, and you 

 are irresistibly drawn to lie down upon it, warm and 

 sheltered, and get your first lazy feel of Mother Earth. 

 Here, also, as you lie out of the wind on the south side of 

 the wall, you will catch the first subtle ground smell of 

 the Spring. 



Like the two sides of the stone wall are the two sides of 

 the sweet-pea trenches, dug the previous Autumn, and 



