t-hatches and wood-peckers ran gayly up the warming
trunks of the trees. Blue jays fluffed and perked and screamed in the
hard-wood tops. A covey of grouse ventured from the swamp and strutted
vainly, a pause of contemplation between each step. Radway, walking out
on the tramped road of the marsh, cracked the artificial skin and thrust
his foot through into icy water. That night the sprinklers stayed in.

The devil seemed in it. If the thaw would only cease before the ice
bottom so laboriously constructed was destroyed! Radway vibrated between
the office and the road. Men were lying idle; teams were doing the same.
Nothing went on but the days of the year; and four of them had already
ticked off the calendar. The deep snow of the unusually cold autumn had
now disappeared from the tops of the stumps. Down in the swamp the covey
of partridges were beginning to hope that in a few days more they might
discover a bare spot in the burnings. It even stopped freezing during
the night. At times Dyer's little thermometer marked as high as forty
degrees.

"I often heard this was a sort 'v summer resort," observed Tom
Broadhead, "but danged if I knew it was a summer resort all the year
'round."

The weather got to be the only topic of conversation. Each had his
say, his prediction. It became maddening. Towards evening the chill of
melting snow would deceive many into the belief that a cold snap was
beginning.

"She'll freeze before morning, sure," was the hopeful comment.

And then in the morning the air would be more balmily insulting than
ever.

"Old man is as blue as a whetstone," commented Jackson Hines, "an' I
don't blame him. This weather'd make a man mad enough to eat the devil
with his horns left on."

By and by it got to be a case of looking on the bright side of the
affair from pure reaction.

"I don't know," said Radway, "it won't be so bad after all. A couple of
days of zero weather, with all this water lying around, would fix things
up in pretty good shape. If she only freezes tight, we'll have a good
solid bottom to build on, and that'll be quite a good rig out there on
the marsh."

The inscrutable goddess of the wilderness smiled, and calmly,
relentlessly, moved her next pawn.

It was all so unutterably simple, and yet so effective. Something there
was in it of the calm inevitability of fate. It snowed.

All night and all day the great flakes zig-zagged softly down through
the air. Radway plowed away t