Probably it was the after-effect of our struggle with the wind and weather that caused us all to sleep very soundly that night; at any rate, it was broad daylight before anyone stirred in the cottage next morning, and we missed the doings of the storm king in the interval. When I first opened my eyes I wondered what the white light could be that was reflected on the ceiling. Then I looked out of the window, and what a scene it was! The whole earth, so far as the eye could see, was one vast fairyland of snow; moreover, the face of creation appeared to have risen three or four feet nearer the bedroom window since last I had looked out, though the full import of this did not occur to me at the moment. I could merely look and look at the wonderful transformation that had been effected so rapidly and so silently while we slept. All trace of the garden had disappeared; shrubs and trees alike were bowed down with billows of snow. In the more exposed places, the wind had blown some of the snow from the firs and larches, but for the most part the trees on the hillside were as laden with snow as those in the garden. We might have been high up in the Alps. The sun was trying to shine, and bringing a gleam and glint out of every snow crystal, but the sky still looked leaden in the north. Eileen, bringing the morning tea, imparted the thrilling intelligence that the snow was several feet deep outside the doors, the outhouses inaccessible. “Then we must clear the snow from the path ourselves,” I said. “There is nothing else for it.” The handy man was laid up with influenza in his home several fields away. And there was small likelihood of any other man coming our way. But the question of a few shovels of snow did not seem a serious matter; we were quite lighthearted about it. When we made our first survey of the situation, however, we found that the snow was far higher outside the door than we had at first imagined. Owing to the position of the house, and the way it nestles back in a little hollow that has been cut out of the hillside to give it level standing room, special inducement had been offered to the snow to pile itself up in drifts and block each door in a most effectual manner. Still—that snow had to be cleared away somehow, and we stood in the doorway and discussed methods.