But I shall like my battle. This sort of day puts one in mood for it. Plenty of wood in the shed, jam and potatoes and apples in the cellar, hay and oats and Cressy in the barn. Pooh - what is winter?

a sarcastic expression, on a beast, is far more sinister than rage.

But I shall like my battle. This sort of day puts one in mood for it. Plenty of wood in the shed, jam and potatoes and apples in the cellar, hay and oats and Cressy in the barn. Pooh - what is winter?

November at its best - with a sort of delightful menace in the air.

the breeze brought us a faint sound, as of a distant rat, a huge and mystic rat, gnawing, maybe, at the horizon!

The thing one resents about winter is its inactivity; the perpetual sameness of ice-armored hills and snow-blanketed woods. Great things, of course, may be going on underneath; but nature wears a mask, is icily non-committal.

My field-mouse had made a set of brand-new tracks; here and there they etched themselves, following the brown flowers. It seemed as if uncommon spirits had seized their little maker, for sometimes he had leaped a yard, the festive mite! There was no other track pursuing; the leaps must have been mere joy.