l by an occasional frost,
descended on the fields like crystal dust, and almost choked her if she
chanced to pass within these wreathing drifts that brought discomfort
and disease to man and beast alike.

But the want of exercise so affected her, that, when again the weather
was fine and she ventured from her lair, she found herself unable to
cover the usual distance of her nightly rambles. As the first cold
glimmer of the dawn appeared in the south-eastern sky, she started back,
in alarm at her fatigue, to complete the remaining mile of her journey
home. Her weakness soon became apparent. Then, finding herself powerless
to proceed, she turned reluctantly aside, and crouched, with Nature's
mimicry for her protection, on the brown ploughland where the winter
wheat was thrusting up its first green sprouts above the soil. But after
a few days she was well and strong again. She suffered far less from
the short, sharp frost that bound the countryside with its icy fetters,
than from the rains. The frost scarcely interfered with her movements;
indeed, it made exercise more than ever necessary. Forced to seek
diligently for her food, she found it in a deserted stubble; there, when
the sheep lay sleeping in the bright winter moonlight, she would squat
beside them, nibbling the turnips scattered over the field as provender
for the flock.

II.

MARCH MADNESS.

March came in "like a lion." The wind whistled round the farmstead on
the hill, and through the doorway of the great kitchen, and down the
open chimney. It woke up the old, grey-haired farmer who dozed on the
"skew" in the ingle-nook by the crackling wood-fire; it almost made him
feel young again with the vigour of the boisterous spring. It sang in
the key-hole of the door between the passage and the best parlour; the
mat at the threshold flapped with a sound as of pattering feet; and the
gaudy calendars on the wall flew up like banners streaming in the
breeze. The old man turned, and eagerly watched the hailstones, as they
dropped tinkling on the roofs of the outhouses, or, driven aslant by
the wind, crashed hissing against the ground, and, rebounding, rolled
across the pebbled yard. The labourers came home to the mid-day meal,
and, pausing at the door, shook the hail from their garments.

"Lads," said the farmer, "I've been spared to hear the whisper of
another spring."

"God be thanked!" said the hind, "for seasonable weather at last. Every
man to his tren