e broke there came to his
nostrils the familiar smell of a partridge. It was a fresh scent. The
fox forgot his indignation. He poked his narrow snout into the snow,
sniffed sharply, and began to dig with all his might.

Now it chanced that the imprisoned bird, in his search for an exit,
had worked away from the spot where he had slept. The fox was puzzled.
That alluring scent was all about him, and most tantalizingly fresh.
He understood this partridge trick, and had several times made his
knowledge supply him with a meal. But hitherto he had always found the
partridge asleep; and he had no idea what the bird would do in such a
case as the present. He dug furiously in one direction, then fiercely
in another, but all in vain. Then he lifted his head, panting, his
pointed ears and ruddy face grotesquely patched with snow. At this
moment a great puff of the white powder was flapped into his eyes, a
feathery dark body jumped up from under his very nose, and the crafty
old bird went whirring off triumphantly to the nearest tree. With his
tongue hanging out, the fox stared foolishly after him, then slunk
away into the woods. And the white rabbit, nibbling at his
birch-twigs, was left in undisputed possession of the scintillating
rainbow world.

By the Winter Tide

Behind the long, slow-winding barrier of the dyke the marshes of
Tantramar lay secure, mile on mile of blue-white radiance under the
unclouded moon. Outside the dyke it was different. Mile on mile of
tumbled, mud-stained ice-cakes, strewn thickly over the Tantramar
flats, waited motionless under the moon for the incoming tide. Twice
in each day the far-wandering tide of Fundy would come in, to lift,
and toss, and grind, and roll the ice-cakes, then return again to its
deep channels; and with every tide certain of the floes would go forth
to be lost in the open sea, while the rest would sink back to their
tumbled stillness on the mud. Just now the flood was coming in. From
all along the outer fringes of the flats came a hoarse, desolate roar;
and in the steady light the edges of the ice-field began to turn and
flash, the strange motion creeping gradually inland toward that
impassive bulwark of the dyke. Had it been daylight, the chaotic
ice-field would have shown small beauty, every wave-beaten floe being
soiled and streaked with rust-coloured Tantramar mud. But under the
transfiguring touch of the moon the unsightly levels changed to plains
of infinite m