Since
morning the sun had begun to warm the air, and a light breeze had
risen. The boy sat bracing on a rope fastened before and looped
around him. As they went along he was oversown with sparkling
crystals. They made his cheeks tingle, and almost took his breath
as he went plunging into steep hollows. Often he tipped over and
sank in the white deep. Then Trove hauled him out, brushed him a
little, and set him back on the boat again. Snow lay deep and
level in the woods--a big, white carpet, seamed with tiny tracks
and figured with light and shadow. Trove stopped a moment, looking
up at the forest roof. They could hear a baying of hounds in the
far valley. Down the dingle near them a dead leaf was drumming on
a bough--a clock of the wood telling the flight of seconds. Above,
they could hear the low creak of brace and rafter and great waves
of the upper deep sweeping over and breaking with a loud wash on
reefs of evergreen. The little people of this odd winter land had
begun to make roads from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket.
A partridge had broken out of her cave, and they followed the track
of her snow-shoes down the side-hill to a little brook. Under its
ice roof they could hear the tinkling water.
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