Already, owing to the severity of the frost, the roads rang like iron to our tread. Every stalk and twig was glistening with rime and feathered with hoar-frost. No sign of life did we see in all that walk. Where were the birds, and squirrels, and rabbits, and pheasants, and all the hundreds of timid wild things we were accustomed to meet on our summer rambles? We hoped they were safely tucked away in barns or burrows, or sleeping in warm hayricks, for nothing else above ground would give them any shelter. I thought of the row of twittering swallows that always perch themselves along the ridge of the cottage roof on hot summer afternoons, and felt glad they had gone off to a warmer climate. But for ourselves, we would not have exchanged the weather that moment for any other, no matter how balmy. There is something remarkably exhilarating in the clear cold air of such a day on the hilltops, and as we mounted up and up our spirits rose with us—even though the roads were rough and terribly hard on war-time leather. I once remarked to a local resident that I found our stony hillside roads a bit trying, to say nothing of the side paths. “Well now, I do be s’prised to hear ’ee a-say that,” he replied. “For the on’y time I were up to Lunnon—I went for a day scursion—d’you know my legs did that _hake_ when I got back, I were a week getting over it. It were all along o’ they flat stones what they do have up there; why, if you believe me, I was a-near toppling over every other minute. There weren’t ne’er a blessed thing to catch holt onter with your toes! I felt as though the pavemint was a-coming up to knock my head. Now on these here roads o’ ourn you can’t slip far, because there’s always summat of a rock or big stone to trip up agin.” For myself, however, I sometimes think I would prefer the said rocks and stones if they were boiled a bit, and then mangled. * * * * * At last we reached the crest of the hill, and paused to get our breath. The silence was awe-inspiring. At all other times there is a persistent hum of insects, or cheep of birds, or the rustling of leaves and swaying grasses—movement and sound somewhere, night as well as day. But when the earth has been swept by the magic of frost, then there is silence indeed. From where we stood, we might have been alone on the very edge of the world. No house was visible, and although we knew that the little village lay in the valley below us, we could see nothing of it. All was grey, merging into indigo in the depths of the coombes. Grey were the trees on the farther hills, grey unrelieved by the lights and shadows that gaily chase each other over the steeps in sunny weather, as the white clouds sail across the sky above them.