Still, I wasn’t going to be outdone in misery by the other two, and noticing that the bushes were actually breaking down under the load of snow, I seized a broom and sallied forth. After all, if one has to die a martyr’s death, one may as well occupy the final moments in doing useful kindnesses for one’s family. It is some sort of solace to picture how they will eventually say, “To think of her doing all that, when——”; or, “To the last she never gave in; why only the very day——!”; or, “Ah! how often have I seen the poor dear——!” etc. So I made for the pink rhododendron, that was suffering badly; being evergreen, its large rosettes of leaves, surrounding each flower-bud of the future, had caught and held great masses of snow; the lower branches were literally buried beneath the heavy drifts. But as I found I couldn’t get at it without clearing a way through a three-foot bank of snow, I set to work with a spade. It sounds simple enough, I know; but unless you’ve been getting your living at snow-clearing, you would never believe what a lot there is to it, when you start to make a nice serviceable path through a drift from two to three feet deep, and six feet long. I reached the pink rhododendron at last. Getting my broom against a main stem, I shook it gently. What a lovely shower came down! I don’t know that I needed it all over me, personally; nor was it necessary to choke up half the cutting I had just made. Still, down it came, white billows and a rain of silver powder. I never knew what snow was really like, till I shook it all over me, and the sun suddenly came out and turned the cascade to a gleaming white radiance. Having got well smothered to start with, I decided I might just as well go on; and that I could dispense with the motor undercoat, which I left hanging on the bush. Lower down the garden I could hear the clink and scrape of shovel and spade against the stones, as the other two cleared the snow from the various little flights of rough stone steps that take you up or down, from one level of the garden to another. But I didn’t feel like clearing steps just then; it was too niggly. I wanted something bigger than that, and I somehow had a desire to work alone, so I struck a path that went up the garden, and began to work my way towards the top gate, clearing as I went. As I bent over the smooth glistening surface, I was amazed to see the number of messages written there for those who know the language of the wilds well enough to read them! What a scurrying to and fro of little feet had been going on since the snowfall, all on the one quest—food and water! Birds innumerable had left their signatures; some I knew, some I could not identify, save that they were birds. Rabbits I could trace; stoats, too, might have made some of the writing in the snow; and there were bigger tracks—perhaps a fox.