eigh explored the country: main-road, worn
smooth by countless farmer-sleighs; by-roads, through which the pony had
to wallow belly-deep, making a new track. Not the mere pleasure of
driving lured them out--that amounted to little after the week of
novelty--but something of the spirit of exploration was in it. Duke
always accompanied them, plunging powerfully through the deepest drifts,
exulting in the snow, rolling in it, frisking in it in all directions,
racing down the road and back, glad to be alive and warm this freezing
weather. One day in a patch of woods he came to an abrupt halt. The
boys, watching, saw his eye fixed, his upper lip snarl back the least in
the world, his tail stiffen except at its quivering tip, his whole body
lengthen and half-crouch and turn rigid. And as the sleigh wallowed near
him, suddenly, with an immense scattering of snow and a startling roar,
an old cock-partridge burst from beneath the surface of the snow and
hurtled away through the frozen trees.

Some days when the wind blew keen and sharp as knives across the broad
reaches, it was almost impossible for the boys to keep warm. The heated
soap-stone wrapped up at their feet, the warm buffalo robes under and
over them, their thick overcoats and fur caps alike proved inadequate.
Then one took his turn at driving, while the other crouched entirely
covered beneath the robes. The wind drove the hard, sparse flakes from
the low leaden sky like so many needles against the driver's face,
filling his eyes with tears, causing his skin to glow and smart. Even in
this was a certain joy and adventure. But again the sun would shine, the
bells jingle louder in the clarified air. Probably, however, the boys
liked best of all the warm, still snowstorms, when all the world was
muffled in the shoes of silence; when nature held her finger on hushed
lips; when deliberately, without haste the great white flakes zigzagged
down from the soft gray above, obscuring and softening the landscape,
rendering dear and mysterious the commonest things. Then sounds came,
subdued as in a sanctuary, and people approaching showed portentous as
through a mist, and the boys, looking upward, caught big wet flakes on
their lashes as they tried in vain to determine the point at which the
snowflakes became visible. There existed no such point. The snowflakes
did not approach as other things approach, beginning small with
distance, and becoming larger as they neared. They flashed