,
were whirling through the gray dusk noiselessly, ceaselessly, always
falling, yet never seeming to fall, rather to restlessly pervade the air
with a vacillating alienation from all the laws of gravitation. Elusive
fascinations of thought were liberated with the shining crystalline
aerial pulsation; some mysterious attraction dwelt down long vistas
amongst the bare trees; their fine fibrous grace of branch and twig
was accented by the snow, which lay upon them with exquisite lightness,
despite the aggregated bulk, not the densely packed effect which the
boughs would show to-morrow. The crags were crowned; their grim faces
looked frowningly out like a warrior's from beneath a wreath. Nowhere
could the brown ground be seen; already the pine boughs bent, the
needles failing to pierce the drifts. On the banks of the stream, on the
slopes of the mountain, in wildest jungles, in the niches and crevices
of bare cliffs, the holly-berries glowed red in the midst of the
ever-green snow-laden leaves and ice-barbed twigs. When his house at
last came into view, the roof was deeply covered; the dizzying whirl had
followed every line of the rail-fence; scurrying away along the furthest
zigzags there was a vanishing glimpse of a squirrel; the boles of the
trees were embedded in drifts; the chickens had gone to roost; the sheep
were huddling in the broad door of the rude stable; he saw their heads
lifted against the dark background within, where the ox was vaguely
glimpsed. He caught their mild glance despite the snow that in-starred
with its ever-shifting crystals the dark space of the aperture, and
intervened as a veil. They suddenly reminded him of the season--that it
was Christmas Eve; of the sheep which so many years ago beheld the
angel of the Lord and the glory of the great light that shone about
the shepherds abiding in the fields. Did they follow, he wondered, the
shepherds who went to seek for Christ? Ah, as he paused meditatively
beside the rail-fence--what matter how long ago it was, how far
away!--he saw those sheep lying about the fields under the vast midnight
sky. They lift their sleepy heads. Dawn? not yet, surely; and they lay
them down again. And one must bleat aloud, turning to see the quickening
sky; and one, woolly, white, white as snow, with eyes illumined by the
heralding heavens, struggles to its feet, and another, and the flock
is astir; and the shepherds, drowsing doubtless, are awakened to good
tidings of gre