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Strong south winds blew frequently, and under their magic influences the great snowdrifts rapidly lessened and then disappeared. From underneath the still hard, dry snow some mysterious melting influence was at work, and the great masses sank down, and soon all flitted away under the wondrous but unseen influences of the coming spring.
They could not locate the exact route toward their camp, but made it as nearly as possible. The snowdrifts were truly terrific, and even on snowshoes they made slow progress. "Wait, I see a rabbit!" cried Shep, presently, and he pointed to a clump of bushes. Then he unslung his shotgun and pushed his way forward. A gray head appeared over the rim of snow and he blazed away.
And just below it, what a riot of bloom there was! I had learned, oft to my inconvenience, that the higher the altitude the greater the precipitation. Around and just below timberline are many lakes, and miles of marshy, boggy land. On those first winter excursions to the heights I marveled at the deep snowdrifts banked in the heavy Englemann forests just below timberline.
The sky was a dull gray, the wind whistled, and the rain beat. Both people and animals knew the spring could not be ushered in with anything short of this; nevertheless they thought it unbearable. After it had been raining for a whole day, the snowdrifts in the pine forests began to melt in earnest, and the spring brooks grew lively.
Leafless woods, prodigious boulders and white torrents foaming and roaring seemed a poor exchange for the pleasantly-ordered gardens of Pianura. Here were no violets and cowslips in bloom; hardly a green blade pierced the sodden roadside, and snowdrifts lingered in the shaded hollows.
About daybreak the general spied an officer on horseback toiling through the snowdrifts toward him. As the horseman drew nearer, he recognized young Martin. "What is it now, sir?" "General Sullivan says that the storm has rendered many of his muskets useless, by wetting the priming and powder. He wishes to know what is to be done, sir?" "Return instantly, and tell him he must use the bayonet!
Some fifteen months before this Midsummer Day she had been the mistress of the lonely old house in which her father and uncle had passed their whole lives, in which she had been born, and in which, amid snowdrifts so deep that no doctor could reach them, her mother had passed away.
The roads had become impassable. A thick, white crust covered alike the pasture-lands, the stony levels, and the wooded slopes, where the branches creaked under the weight of their snowy burdens. A profound silence encircled the village, which seemed buried under the successive layers of snowdrifts.
There was not enough fuel to heat the broken and damaged structures, for an allowance of "ten cords of maple wood for the winter" was not sufficient to bring warmth. The College grounds were uncared for. Students who dwelt in the city tramped through snowdrifts to the cold College classrooms.
Here the air blew across orange groves and came laden with the sweetness of opening buds; here, if it were a sunny Christmas Day, as well it might be, the children came in to dinner tired with playing in the garden: but the same sort of joyous cries that rent the air three thousand miles away at sight of hot plum-pudding woke the echoes here because of fresh strawberries and loquats; and although, in the minds of the elders, who had been born in snowdrifts and bred upon icicles, this union of balmy air, singing birds, and fragrant bloom might strike a false note at Christmastide, it brought nothing but joy to the children.
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