my head. The
voice said, "Let the poor brutes go home." As he spoke the man turned
the sheep back towards the church again, and I recognized Eugene, the
farmer's brother. He passed his hand over the back of one of the sheep
and said, "How pretty they are with their little frost balls. But it
is not good for them."

I was not at all surprised at meeting him there. I showed him the
church and asked him what it was. "It was for you," he said. "I was
afraid that you would not find the avenue of chestnut trees, and I hung
up a lantern on each side." I felt all confused. It was only a few
moments afterwards that I understood that the great pillars, blackened
and worn by centuries, were simply the trunks of the chestnut trees,
and then I recognized the small-paned windows of the farmhouse kitchen,
which the fire lit up from inside. Eugene counted the sheep himself.
He helped me to make them a warm litter of straw, and as we left the
pen together he asked me if I really didn't know what had become of the
two lambs that had been lost. I felt dreadfully ashamed at the thought
that he could believe that I had told a lie, and I could not help
crying, and told him that they had disappeared without my having seen
how or where they went. Then he told me that he had found them drowned
in a water-hole. I thought he was going to scold me for not having
watched them better, but he said gently, "Go and get warm; you have got
all the rime of Sologne in your hair." I made up my mind that I would
go and see the waterhole. But during the night snow fell so quickly
that we couldn't go out to the fields next day.

I helped old Bibiche to mend the household linen; Martine sat down to
her spinning wheel, and I sang to them while we sewed and Martine span.

While we sat at work that evening the dogs never stopped barking.
Martine seemed anxious. She listened to the dogs, and then turning to
the farmer she said, "I am afraid this weather will bring the wolves
down." The farmer got up to go out and talk to the dogs, and took his
lantern to make a round of the outhouses. During the week that the
snow lasted hundreds of crows came to the farm. They were so hungry
that nothing frightened them. They went into the cow-house and the
pens and into the granary, and they made very free with the corn ricks.
The farmer killed a lot of them. We cooked some of them with bacon and
cabbage. Everybody thought them very good, but the do