Christmas in the Woods 
must kill to live, and if he gloated over the kill, why, 
what fault of his? But the other weasel, the one 
with the blood-stained bag, he killed for the love 
of killing. I was glad he was gone. 
The crows were winging over toward their great 
roost in the pines when I turned toward the town. 
They, too, had had good picking along the creek 
flats and ditches of the meadows, Their powerful 
wing-beats and constant play told of full crops and 
no fear for the night, already softly gray across the 
white silent fields. The air was crisper; the snow 
began to crackle under foot; the twigs creaked and 
rattled as I brushed along; a brown beech leaf wav- 
ered down and skated with a thin scratch over the 
crust; and pure as the snow-wrapped crystal world, 
and sweet as the soft gray twilight, came the call of 
a quail. 
The voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer 
were gone. The very face of things had changed; all 
had been reduced, made plain, simple, single, pure! 
There was less for the senses, but how much keener 
now their joy! The wide landscape, the frosty air, 
the tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out of the quiet of the 
falling twilight, the voice of the quail! 
33 
