A SNOW-STOEM 93 



the last degree. The foot sped through it without 

 hindrance. I fancied the grouse and quails quietly- 

 sitting down in the open places, and letting it drift 

 over them. With head under wing, and wing 

 snugly folded, they would be softly and tenderly 

 buried in a few moments. The mice and the squir- 

 rels were in their dens, but I fancied the fox asleep 

 upon some rock or log, and allowing the flakes to 

 cover him. The hare in her form, too, was being 

 warmly sepulchred with the rest. I thought of the 

 young cattle and the sheep huddled together on the 

 lee side of a haystack in some remote field, all en- 

 veloped in mantles of white. 



" I thought me on the curie cattle, 

 Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle 



O' wintry war, 

 Or thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, 

 Beneath a scaur. 



" Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, 

 That in the merry months o' spring 

 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 



What comes o' thee ? 

 Where wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, 

 And close thy ee ? " 



As I passed the creek, I noticed the white woolly 

 masses that filled the water. It was as if somebody 

 upstream had been washing his sheep and the water 

 had carried away all the wool, and I thought of the 

 Psalmist's phrase, "He giveth snow like wool." 

 On the river a heavy fall of snow simulates a thin 

 layer of cotton batting. The tide drifts it along, 

 and, where it meets with an obstruction alongshore, 

 it folds up and becomes wrinkled or convoluted like 



