here is another caving
in. I believe it is this what makes horses so nervous when crossing
drifts. Later on in the winter there is, of course, the additional
complication of successive snowfalls. The layers from this cause are
usually clearly discernible by differences in colour.

I have never figured out just how far I went along this entirely
unbroken road, but I believe it must have been for two miles. I know
that my horses were pretty well spent by the time we hit upon another
trail. It goes without saying that this trail, too, though it came from
town, had not been gone over during the day and therefore consisted of
nothing but a pair of whiter ribbons on the drifts; but underneath these
ribbons the snow was packed. Hardly anybody cares to be out on a day
like that, not even for a short drive. And though in this respect I
differ in my tastes from other people, provided I can keep myself from
actually getting chilled, even I began to feel rather forlorn, and that
is saying a good deal.

A few hundred yards beyond the point where we had hit upon this new
trail which was only faintly visible, the horses turned eastward, on to
a field. Between two posts the wire of the fence had been taken down,
and since I could not see any trail leading along the road further
south, I let my horses have their will. I knew the farm on which we
were. It was famous all around for its splendid, pure-bred beef cattle
herd. I had not counted on crossing it, but I knew that after a mile
of this field trail I should emerge on the farmyard, and since I was
particularly well acquainted with the trail from there across the wild
land to Bell's corner, it suited me to do as my horses suggested. As a
matter of fact this trail became--with the exception of one drive--my
regular route for the rest of the winter. Never again was I to meet with
the slightest mishap on this particular run. But to-day I was to come as
near getting lost as I ever came during the winter, on those drives to
and from the north.

For the next ten minutes I watched the work of the wind on the open
field. As is always the case with me, I was not content with recording
a mere observation. I had watched the thing a hundred times before.
"Observing" means to me as much finding words to express what I see as
it means the seeing itself. Now, when a housewife takes a thin
sheet that is lying on the bed and shakes it up without changing its
horizontal position, the running waves o