n the morning,
reminding us of the railroad to the south of us.

Coming to a thick spruce grove, we decided to take cover for the day.
The morning was red and cloudy, with a chilly wind crackling the
trees over our heads, but as the day wore on, the wind went down and
the sun came out. It was a long day, though, and it seemed as if the
night would never come. It was too cold to sleep comfortably, but we
got a little sleep, some way.

When we started out at night, we soon came to a ditch too wide to
jump, and as our feet were dry we did not want to wet our socks, so
took them off and went through. January is a cold month for wading
streams, and a thin crust of ice was hard on the feet. They felt
pretty numb for a while, but when we had wiped them as dry as we
could and got on our socks and boots again, they were soon all right.
But our care for our feet did not save them, for the muddy ground,
full of bog-holes, which we next encountered, made us as wet and
miserable as we could be.

One large town--it may have been Soegel--gave us considerable trouble
getting around it.

The time of year made the going bad. There were no vegetables in the
gardens or apples on the trees; no cows out at pasture. Even the
leaves were gone from the trees, thus making shelter harder to find.
The spruce trees and Scotch fir were our stronghold, and it was in
spruce thickets we made our hiding-places by day.

The advantage of winter travel was the longer nights, and although
it had been raining frequently, and the coldest, most disagreeable
rains, the weather was dry during the time we were out. But the going
was heavy and bad, and when the time came to rest, we were completely
done out.

We had put ourselves on short rations because we had not been able to
save much; we had no way of carrying it except in our pockets, and we
had to be careful not to make them bulge. We had biscuits, chocolate,
and cheese, but not being able to get even a raw turnip to supplement
our stores, we had to save them all we could.

On January 25th, our third day out, the bush was so short we had to
lie all day to remain hidden. We could not once stand up and stretch,
and the day was interminably long. A bird's nest, deserted now, of
course, and broken, hung in a stunted Scotch fir over my head, and as
I lay looking at it I thought of the hard struggle birds have, too,
to get along, and of how they have to be on the watch for enemies.

Life is a queer puzz