els,
whose rims and spokes and hubs were hung and bespattered, like all else,
with snow.

It was true that he looked like some other person's dog, with a white
face and whiskers. But his master was white, too, from head to foot; what
recked it!

In another hour or less darkness would have shut down on the world,
though such a term as darkness was only relative on a day when it could
never have been said to have been light.

When the open was reached, the snow, broken into hard flakes, whipped
face and ears like nettles. Murphy was the best off of the party, save
when something had drawn him from beneath the waggon, and he was having a
game with the snow on his own account. Great wreaths hung to the fences,
or stood out in ledges where the banks were high. The sky, or rather the
whole air, was lead colour, and all distance was blotted out. Flocks of
crazy, distracted birds flew close by in great numbers, for the most part
finches and larks, with here and there a fieldfare or two, their breasts
and underwings buff colour. Then came a flight wholly made up of
buntings, whose brilliant yellows looked deep orange against the leaden
grey that shrouded all.

There was no end to the great host. They were all going one way: they
made no sound but the swish of wings, and uttered no single note: they
passed at speed as though in fear, yet all the while in obedience to the
supremest law of all. To the southward there would be protection; life
there would be preserved: here it was impossible--for birds. "Keep low;
press on!" Victory shall be to the strongest: the weak shall fall in this
pitiless wind, and the snow shall cover the dead, but in the end there
shall be a better life for some. "Keep low; press on!"

There was something weird in such a sight as that: there was something
weird also in the sound of the wind. It came sweeping over the fields,
tearing with angry gusts at the snow-laden briars in the fences, and
passing on with a moaning sound into the dark of the approaching night.

There was no sign of human beings anywhere. Familiar objects had all
changed their character, though it was only by these that whereabouts
could be told. The remains of a hay-rick by the roadside suddenly showed
up out of the mirk, with white top like some great ghost, its blackened
sides flecked here and there with snow. In the hot days of June two here
had seen it built; and, later on, watched the trussers at work on it,
when the price of