the snow is
a warm wrap, and the air passes through it easily enough for breathing.
Next morning each partridge found a solid wall of ice before him from
his frozen breath, but easily turned to one side and rose on the wing at
Redruff's morning 'Kreet, kreet, kwit,' (Come children, come children,
fly.)

This was the first night for them in a snow-drift, though it was an old
story to Redruff, and next night they merrily dived again into bed, and
the north wind tucked them in as before. But a change of weather was
brewing. The night wind veered to the east. A fall of heavy flakes gave
place to sleet, and that to silver rain.

The whole wide world was sheathed in ice, and when the grouse awoke to
quit their beds, they found them selves sealed in with a great cruel
sheet of edgeless ice. The deeper snow was still quite soft, and Redruff
bored his way to the top, but there the hard, white sheet defied his
strength. Hammer and struggle as he might he could make no impression,
and only bruised his wings and head. His life had been made up of keen
joys and dull hardships, with frequent sudden desperate straits, but
this seemed the hardest brunt of all, as the slow hours wore on and
found him weakening with his struggles, but no nearer to freedom. He
could hear the struggling of his family, too, or sometimes heard
them calling to him for help with their long-drawn plaintive
'p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e, p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e.'

They were hidden from many of their enemies, but not from the pangs of
hunger, and when the night came down the weary prisoners, worn out with
hunger and useless toil, grew quiet in despair. At first they had been
afraid the fox would come and find them imprisoned there at his mercy,
but as the second night went slowly by they no longer cared, and even
wished he would come and break the crusted snow, and so give them at
least a fighting chance for life.

But when the fox really did come padding over the frozen drift, the
deep-laid love of life revived, and they crouched in utter stillness
till he passed. The second day was one of driving storm. The north
wind sent his snow-horses, hissing and careering over the white earth,
tossing and curling their white manes and kicking up more snow as they
dashed on. The long, hard grinding of the granular snow seemed to be
thinning the snow-crust, for though far from dark below, it kept on
growing lighter. Redruff had pecked and pecked at the under side all
day, till his head ach