The Bay of the Band 
and freezes out there. In here, beneath the ice-roof, 
the roots of the sedges are pink and tender ; our roads 
are all open and they run every way, overall the rich, 
rooty meadow. 
The muskrats are building. Winteris coming. The 
muskrats are making preparations, but not they alone. 
The preparation for hard weather is to be seen every- 
where, and it has been going on ever since the first 
flocking of the swallows back in July. Up to that 
time the season still seemed young ; no one thought 
of harvest, of winter; — when there upon the tele- 
graph wires one day were the swallows, and work 
against the winter had commenced. 
The great migratory movements of the birds, mys- 
terious in some of their courses as the currents of 
the sea, were in the beginning, and are still, for the 
most part, mere shifts to escape the cold. Why in 
the spring these same birds should leave the south- 
ern lands of plenty and travel back to the hungrier 
north to nest, is not easily explained. Perhaps it is 
the home instinct that draws them back; for home 
to birds (and men) is the land of the nest. However, 
it is very certain that among the autumn migrants 
there would be at once a great falling off should there 
8 
