that was ever worked.

But, ah! the poor birds! it was a sad time for them; and they would
huddle up together in flocks; and very often got to be so cold and
hungry that the country people picked them up half dead, with their
feathers all ruffled up and their beautiful little bright, beady eyes
half-shut. Ah! those were sad times at Greenlawn; and the master would
gladly have helped the poor things if he could; but generally they used
to fly right off, miles away, so that very often not a bird was to be
seen but Bob Robin, who kept hopping about the doors and windows.

But Jack Frost did not care a bit, for he loved freezing; and when the
winter nights were come, with the moon shining, and the stars twinkling
and blinking ever so high up, Jack would put on his skates and go
skimming over the country, breathing on people's window-panes, and
making them all over ferny frost-work; hanging icicles round the eaves
of the houses; making the roads so hard that they would sound hollow and
rattle as the wheels passed over; and turning the ponds, lakes, and
rivers into hard ringing ice. Then the frost would hang upon the
labourers' hair, and little knobs of ice upon the bristles about the
horses' muzzles; while some of the branches of the trees would become so
loaded with the white clinging snow that they would snap off and fall to
the ground. Away would troop the birds in the day-time then to feast
upon the scarlet berries of the holly, the pearly dew-like drops of the
mistletoe, or the black coaly berries that grew upon the ivy-tod; and
away and away they would fly again with wild and plaintive cries as Jack
Frost would send a cutting blast in amongst them to scare them away.
How the poor birds would look at the man cutting logs of wood to take to
the master's house; and how they would watch the blue smoke and sparks
come curling out of the wide chimneys. In the night the wild geese
would fly over to the moor, crying "Clang-clang-clang," and frightening
many a shivering sleeper with their wild shriek; and then the
long-necked birds would dart down from their high swoop to some lonely
lake in the wild moor, there to sit upon the cold ice, pluming
themselves ere they started again for some spot where the frost king had
not all his own way.

Old Ogrebones, the kingfisher, lay snug at the bottom of his hole in the
bank; while all the tender birds were far-off in milder climes, where
flies were to be caught, and where the sun