Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
hummocks and tiny ice-floes with the Water-hens walking 
daintily about among them. Beautiful long icicles like 
stalagmites hang from the overhanging banks, and the 
prettiest glassy drops depend from bough and twig and dry 
grass-blade. The Rabbits do not like this hard weather, and 
are sore put to it to find food, barking the Hollies and any 
other tree they can ; they make the most curious tunnels 
under the snow to and from their burrows. The village 
school is perforce closed ; the little scholars cannot venture 
miles from home. Three little girls who lived in cottages 
close by struggled up the brae to the school and found 
nothing going on, so, as they told me, “ we jist played a 
wee at marbles in the schule and came oot.” The snow- 
plough is busy opening up some of the roads, but some of 
the country byroads do not receive this attention at the 
hands of the county authorities, and are in consequence 
impassable from deep snow-wreaths. In our little village 
there is such a thirst for war news, the “ Laird’s twa sons 
are awa’, ye ken.” Minister or dominie struggles daily through 
the fields down to the station in the bottom to learn the 
news, for the road is blocked with snow; some carters 
taking sheep to market had actually to cut their way through 
the snow with spades, and in some places even the snow- 
plough struck work. Yesterday the train had to be pre- 
ceded on the rails by a snow-plough to enable it to get along 
at all, and of course it was late. Some people had to spend 
the night in a snowed-up train not very far from here. 
Birds are frozen, and I heard of some birds — Sparrows, I 
think — whose claws were frozen to the branch they sat on, 
and would have died but for a kind passer-by, who warmed 
their little feet and freed them. A curious thing has hap- 
pened in our cold-frame. Some Voles got in and barked 
my variegated Geraniums. A trap was set, and, strange to 
say, the Vole who was caught in it was actually found half 
devoured by his kinsfolk, a thing none of us ever saw 
before. Yet, in spite of this intense hard weather, I found 
in a wind-swept clearing under a tree in the “ plantin ” some 
Snowdrops in bud. 
258 
