CHAPTER VI 



CHICKADEE 



I WAS crunching along through the January 

 dusk toward home. The cold was bitter. A 

 half -starved partridge had just risen from the 

 road and fluttered off among the naked bushes a 

 bit of life vanishing into the winter night of the 

 woods. I knew the very hemlock in which he would 

 roost ; but what were the thick, snow-bent boughs 

 of his hemlock, and what were all his winter feath- 

 ers in such a night as this ? this night of cutting 

 winds and frozen snow ! 



The road dipped from the woods down into a 

 wide, open meadow, where the winds were free. The 

 cold was driving, numbing here, with a power for 

 death that the thermometer could not mark. I 

 backed against the gale and sidewise hastened for- 

 ward toward the double line of elms that arched 

 the road in front of the house. Already I could 

 hear them creak and rattle like things of glass. It 

 was not the sound of life. Nothing was alive ; for 

 what could live in this long darkness and fearful 

 cold? 



The question was hardly thought, when an answer 

 was whirled past me into the nearest of the naked 



