After wheeling about in the air they will presently
return--first one, then three or four, and finally the flock, to their
roosting-place.
It is easy now to walk through the wood without making a noise: there is
room to pass between the stoles of ash; and the dead sticks that would
have cracked under foot are covered with snow. But be careful how you
step; for in some places the snow has fallen upon a mass of leaves
filling a swampy hollow. Above there is a thin crust of snow, but under
the leaves the oozy ground is still soft.
Upon the dark pines the snow has lodged, making the boughs bend
downwards. Where the slope becomes a hill the ash stoles and nut-tree
bushes are far apart and thinner, so that there are wide white spaces
around them. Regaining now the top of the hill where the plain comes to
the verge of the wood, there is a clear view down across the ash poles
to the withies, the white mere, and the meadows below. Everywhere
silence, stillness, sleep.
In the high trees slumbering creatures; in the hedgerows, in the bushes,
and the withies birds with feathers puffed out, slumbering; in the
banks, under the very ground, dormant animals. A quiet cold that at
first does not seem cold because it is so quiet, but which gradually
seizes on and stills the sap of plants and the blood of living things. A
ruthless frost, still, subtle, and irresistible, that will slay the bird
on its perch and weaken the swift hare.
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