tories of snow had
been flung across--some of them five to six feet high. They started at
the edge of the field to the left where a rank growth of shrubby weeds
gave shelter for the snow to pile in. Their base, alongside the fence,
was broad, and they tapered across the road, with a perfectly flat top,
and with concave sides of a most delicate, smooth, and finished looking
curve, till at last they ran out into a sharp point, mostly beyond the
road on the field to the right.

The wind plays strange pranks with snow; snow is the most plastic medium
it has to mould into images and symbols of its moods. Here one of these
promontories would slope down, and the very next one would slope upward
as it advanced across the open space. In every case there had been
two walls, as it were, of furious blow, and between the two a lane of
comparative calm, caused by the shelter of a clump of brush or weeds, in
which the snow had taken refuge from the wind's rough and savage play.
Between these capes of snow there was an occasional bare patch of
clean swept ground. Altogether there was an impression of barren, wild,
bitter-cold windiness about the aspect that did not fail to awe my mind;
it looked inhospitable, merciless, and cruelly playful.

As yet the horses seemed to take only delight in dashing through the
drifts, so that the powdery crystals flew aloft and dusted me all over.
I peered across the field to the left, and a curious sight struck me.
There was apparently no steady wind at all, but here and there, and
every now and then a little whirl of snow would rise and fall again.
Every one of them looked for all the world like a rabbit reconnoitring
in deep grass. It jumps up on its hindlegs, while running, peers out,
and settles down again. It was as if the snow meant to have a look
at me, the interloper at such an early morning hour. The snow was so
utterly dry that it obeyed the lightest breath; and whatever there was
of motion in the air, could not amount to more than a cat's-paw's sudden
reach.

At the exact moment when the snow where it stood up highest became
suffused with a rose-red tint from the rising sun, I arrived at the turn
to the correction line. Had I been a novice at the work I was engaged
in, the sight that met my eye might well have daunted me. Such drifts
as I saw here should be broken by drivers who have short hauls to make
before the long distance traveller attempts them. From the fence on the
north side of