OF SHACAIM 
THE REDWING 
I 
FOR three days, the north wind blew. Then it 
shifted a few points to the east, and in the 
morning watch the snow came. When the 
tardy dawn broke, it was not so much the 
arrival of day as the passing of night ; and 
what light there was arose, not so much from 
the grey sky, or from the greyer sea, but from 
the earth, already whitened in the hollows. 
And before the darkness had lifted sufficiently 
to let a man tell the curdled foam on the beach 
from the snow which it licked, the birds began 
to come over from Wales. A flock of curlew, 
flying high to the sou'-west, began the 
stream, and it continued without intermission 
until noon. Larks, worn with buffeting for 
hours with snow and wind, perched thankfully 
upon the frozen beach, too exhausted to struggle 
a few yards farther on into the shelter of the 
bent grass ; and pipits toddled weakly over 
the shingle, or crouched behind pebbles with 
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