22 BAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



ten. Sun-dried mud, dead grass, twigs, stranded bushes, 

 and here and there a drowned animal, were well blended, 

 strange as it may seem, and as a whole were quite in 

 place, as they wound, like a ragged ribbon, along the hill. 



If but merely glanced at, nothing could be found more 

 in keeping with a bleak winter day than this relic of the 

 recent flood. Every object you saw — ^leaf, twig, or animal — 

 was dead. So, too, has seemed the whole world as seen 

 from my study windows. But upon stirring the matted 

 mass it proved to be harboring life in many forms. The 

 sunshine of preceding' days had been stored up here, and 

 throughout the maze many creatures of many kinds found 

 all things favorable for active existence. Almost the first 

 leaf that I overturned disturbed a gaunt, grim spider, that 

 mounted a short projecting twig and glared back at me 

 with a torrid rather than a frigid countenance. Deeper 

 in the drifted mass, where the trickling waters of a little 

 spring had formed a shallow pool, were numbers of a long, 

 lithe, yellow salamanders, which I had not found before, 

 and so had held were not to be included in our fauna. I 

 forgot for the time that others might have been more for- 

 tunate, as was the case, and so my denial was on a par 

 with that of many critics, for with them denial is about 

 their only stock in trade. 



Even insect life was not wanting, and small black bee- 

 tles that had outlived the summer were abundant, as well 

 as the dried bodies of many that had droned through hot 

 August nights, and hidden themselves away when the 

 early frosts of autumn had chilled them to the core. 



My dictionary defines " bleak " as " cold, open, exposed, 

 cheerless, and solitary " ; the sum, in short, of all outdoor 

 miseries ; and perhaps the meadows will prove to be typi- 

 cally bleak. So I thought, but as I wandered on, as far 

 as the bank of the river, and even over the rough ice that 

 now hides the wide stream from view, I found no spot as 



