the outlets being blocked
with ice set up like tables, it threatened to flood everything. Already
it was ponding up, like a tide advancing at the threshold of the door
from which we had watched the duck-birds; both because great piles of
snow trended in that direction, in spite of all our scraping, and also
that the gulley hole, where the water of the shoot went out (I mean when
it was water) now was choked with lumps of ice, as big as a man's body.
For the "shoot," as we called our little runnel of everlasting water,
never known to freeze before, and always ready for any man either to
wash his hands, or drink, where it spouted from a trough of bark, set
among white flint-stones; this at last had given in, and its music
ceased to lull us, as we lay in bed.

It was not long before I managed to drain off this threatening flood,
by opening the old sluice-hole; but I had much harder work to keep the
stables, and the cow-house, and the other sheds, from flooding. For we
have a sapient practice (and I never saw the contrary round about our
parts, I mean), of keeping all rooms underground, so that you step down
to them. We say that thus we keep them warmer, both for cattle and for
men, in the time of winter, and cooler in the summer-time. This I will
not contradict, though having my own opinion; but it seems to me to be
a relic of the time when people in the western countries lived in caves
beneath the ground, and blocked the mouths with neat-skins.

Let that question still abide, for men who study ancient times to inform
me, if they will; all I know is, that now we had no blessings for the
system. If after all their cold and starving, our weak cattle now should
have to stand up to their knees in water, it would be certain death to
them; and we had lost enough already to make us poor for a long time;
not to speak of our kind love for them. And I do assure you, I loved
some horses, and even some cows for that matter, as if they had been my
blood-relations; knowing as I did their virtues. And some of these were
lost to us; and I could not bear to think of them. Therefore I worked
hard all night to try and save the rest of them.

CHAPTER XLVI

SQUIRE FAGGUS MAKES SOME LUCKY HITS

[Illustration: 397.jpg Illustrated Capital]

Through that season of bitter frost the red deer of the forest, having
nothing to feed upon, and no shelter to rest in, had grown accustomed to
our ricks of corn, and hay, and clover. There we mig