easeless activity that
somehow did not freeze, at 20 deg. below zero.

In this freezing weather, too, came the white-winged flocks of
snow-buntings, that heralded the coming storm and flew away, blending
with the whirling snowflakes, uttering queer thin notes that seemed like
spirit voices from the upper air: all these and many others, Nature's
humble angels, what part and parcel they were of that dear old farm life
of ours!

Nor yet have I mentioned the larger game birds, nor the birds of prey;
the "hoot-owls" that both in summer and winter, but oftenest in March
and October, on still, dark, cloudy evenings, uttered their dismal, deep
bass _hoot, hoot, hoo-oo-oot_, from the depths of the gloomy forest
side, beyond the Little Sea; the hen-hawks that cried down _chickee-ee_
to us, from endless mazy circles high over the farm, and occasionally
decimated the poultry, or were seen sailing low across the fields with a
snake dangling from their claws; the eagles that seldom, but on a few
occasions paid a brief visit to the vicinity; the herons that frogged
along the boggy shore of the lake and built their nests in the tops of
the Foy Brook pines; the wild geese that flew northward in a wide V,
early in the spring and again southward in October; the sheldrake and
the black ducks which Addison had such success shooting every fall, in
the old mill pond, beyond the east wood-lot; the swift-diving loons of
the blue Pennesseewassee, that flew heavily across the hills, to several
northerly ponds, uttering shaken, hollow cries, or that in the early
evening and morning hours, pealed their mellow, alto horns from the calm
bosom of the lake; the partridges that "drummed" in the outlying copses
and patches of second growth, in April, and led forth their broods in
June, subject every autumn to our first excited, early efforts at
gunning; and last of all, the flapping, canny, thievish, black crows
that like the foxes were always about, and always at loggerheads with
the farmers.

CHAPTER XII

TWO VERY EARLY CALLERS--EACH ON BUSINESS

Except on Sunday mornings, breakfast at the farm in summer came at six.
The Old Squire himself was often astir at four; and we boys were
supposed to get up at five, so as to have milking done and other barn
chores off, ready to go into the field from the breakfast table. Gram
and the girls also rose at five, to get breakfast, take care of the milk
and look after the poultry. Everybody, in fact, r