ripe.

I was out before the sun, tramping down to the pond with pike and saw,
the team not likely to be along for half an hour yet, the breaking of
the marvelous day all mine. Like apples of gold in baskets of silver
were the snow-covered ridges in the light of the slow-coming dawn. The
wind had fallen, but the chill seemed the more intense, so silently it
took hold. My breath hung about me in little gray clouds, covering my
face, and even my coat, with rime. As the hurt passed from my fingers,
my eyebrows seemed to become detached, my cheeks shrunk, my flesh
suddenly free of cumbering clothes. But in half a minute the rapid red
blood would come beating back, spreading over me and out from me, with
the pain, and then the glow, of life, of perfect life that seemed
itself to feed upon the consuming cold.

No other living thing was yet abroad, no stir or sound except the
tinkling of tiny bells all about me that were set to swinging as I
moved along. The crusted snow was strewn with them; every twig was
hung, and every pearl-bent grass blade. Then off through the woods
rang the chime of louder bells, sleigh bells; then the shrill squeal of
iron runners over dry snow; then the broken voices of men; and soon
through the winding wood road came the horses, their bay coats white,
as all things were, with the glittering dust of the hoar frost.

It was beautiful work. The mid-afternoon found us in the thick of a
whirling storm, the grip of the cold relaxed, the woods abloom with the
clinging snow. But the crop was nearly in. High and higher rose the
cold blue cakes within the ice-house doors until they touched the
rafter plate.

It was hard work. The horses pulled hard; the men swore hard, now and
again, and worked harder than they swore. They were rough, simple men,
crude and elemental like their labor. It was elemental work--filling a
house with ice, three hundred-pound cakes of clean, clear ice, cut from
the pond, skidded into the pungs, and hauled through the woods all
white, and under a sky all gray, with softly-falling snow. They earned
their penny; and I earned my penny, and I got it, though I asked only
the wages of going on from dawn to dark, down the crystal hours of the
day.

[Illustration: Seed catalogues]

IV

SEED CATALOGUES

"The new number of the 'Atlantic' came to-day," She said, stopping by
the table. "It has your essay in it."

"Yes?" I replied, only half hearing.

"You have se