aid Polly, as indeed it was.

"No," said he, with a little squint as he touched the aching
member. "It's good--I rather like it. I wouldn't take anything
for that ear. It--it--" He hesitated, as if trying to recall the
advantages of a chilled ear. "Well, I shouldn't know I had any
ears if it weren't for that one. Come, Paul, put on your cap an'
mittens. We'll take a sack and get some green boughs for your
mother."

He put on snow-shoes, wrapped the boy snugly in a shawl, and,
seating him on a snowboat, made off, hauling it with a rope over
white banks and hollows toward the big timber. The dog, Bony, came
along with them, wallowing to his ears and barking merrily. Since
morning the sun had begun to warm the air, and a light breeze had
risen. The boy sat bracing on a rope fastened before and looped
around him. As they went along he was oversown with sparkling
crystals. They made his cheeks tingle, and almost took his breath
as he went plunging into steep hollows. Often he tipped over and
sank in the white deep. Then Trove hauled him out, brushed him a
little, and set him back on the boat again. Snow lay deep and
level in the woods--a big, white carpet, seamed with tiny tracks
and figured with light and shadow. Trove stopped a moment, looking
up at the forest roof. They could hear a baying of hounds in the
far valley. Down the dingle near them a dead leaf was drumming on
a bough--a clock of the wood telling the flight of seconds. Above,
they could hear the low creak of brace and rafter and great waves
of the upper deep sweeping over and breaking with a loud wash on
reefs of evergreen. The little people of this odd winter land had
begun to make roads from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket.
A partridge had broken out of her cave, and they followed the track
of her snow-shoes down the side-hill to a little brook. Under its
ice roof they could hear the tinkling water. Above them the brook
fell from a rock shelf, narrow and high as a man's head. The fall
was muted to a low murmur under its vault of ice.

"Come, Paul," said Trove, as he lifted the small boy; "here's a
castle of King Frost. There are thousands in his family, and he's
many castles. Building new ones every day somewhere. Goes north
in the spring, and when he moves out they begin to rot and tumble."

He cleared a space for the boy to stand upon. Then he brushed away
the snow blanket flung loosely over the vault of ice. A wonde