mounted
impulsively, and drummed again and again.

From that time he often drummed, while his children sat around, or one
who showed his father's blood would mount some nearby stump or stone,
and beat the air in the loud tattoo.

The black grapes and the Mad Moon now came on. But Redruff's brood were
of a vigorous stock; their robust health meant robust wits, and though
they got the craze, it passed within a week, and only three had flown
away for good.

Redruff, with his remaining three, was living in the glen when the snow
came. It was light, flaky snow, and as the weather was not very cold,
the family squatted for the night under the low, flat boughs of a
cedar-tree. But next day the storm continued, it grew colder, and the
drifts piled up all day. At night the snowfall ceased, but the frost
grew harder still, so Redruff, leading the family to a birch-tree above
a deep drift, dived into the snow, and the others did the same. Then
into the holes the wind blew the loose snow--their pure white
bed-*clothes, and thus tucked in they slept in comfort, for the snow is
a warm wrap, and the air passes through it easily enough for breathing.
Next morning each partridge found a solid wall of ice before him from
his frozen breath, but easily turned to one side and rose on the wing at
Redruff's morning '_Kreet, kreet, kwit_.' (Come children, come children,
fly.)

This was the first night for them in a snowdrift, though it was an old
story to Redruff, and next night they merrily dived again into bed, and
the north wind tucked them in as before. But a change of weather was
brewing. The night wind veered to the east. A fall of heavy flakes gave
place to sleet, and that to silver rain. The whole wide world was
sheathed in ice, and when the grouse awoke to quit their beds, they
found themselves sealed in with a great, cruel sheet of edgeless ice.

The deeper snow was still quite soft, and Redruff bored his way to the
top, but there the hard, white sheet defied his strength. Hammer and
struggle as he might he could make no impression, and only bruised his
wings and head. His life had been made up of keen joys and dull
hardships, with frequent sudden desperate straits, but this seemed the
hardest brunt of all, as the slow hours wore on and found him weakening
with his struggles, but no nearer to freedom. He could hear the
struggling of his family, too, or sometimes heard them calling to him
for help with their long-drawn plaintive