WHEN THE NIGHT FALLS. 237 



with deep snow, frozen hard on the surface. That 

 is a mercy, for it can be walked over. It is a 

 glittering plain in the daytime, a grey ghost - like 

 sheet at night covering all. 



For six weeks has this lasted ; and it looks, so 

 far as sky and bird signs go, as if it would last 

 for as many more. If ever there was a case of 

 "between the devil and the deep sea," as they 

 phrase it, this is one. Snowed-up completely on 

 the marsh -flats, waist-deep, five miles from the 

 nearest place where the folks could get a loaf of 

 bread, no one but those who have experienced 

 such matters can tell what this means, — being 

 simply cut off for a time from the most common 

 necessaries of life and from the outside world. 



If those calm-faced grey-eyed women — the wives 

 of the marsh-dwellers I used to know— had not 

 already had to wrestle with and overcome many 

 of the serious exigencies of daily life, more than 

 one mother and her new-born child would have 

 perished ; for at that time no medical aid could 

 reach them. 



Broad dykes, and still wider lagoons, in some 

 instances far deeper in mud than they were in 



