Soon the air became very chilly, as during the first snow on a damp November day, while the ground was white with hailstones. This abrupt change in the atmosphere from heat to extreme cold caused untimely deaths in the chicken yard. The old mother hen lost her head completely, and unable to find shelter in the barn because of the banging doors, she put her head in a crevice while her brood ran about and perished with cold or were killed by the stones. Merwin’s mother sadly watched the devastation of her little garden, and the death of her chickens. It was impossible to go to their rescue without danger to our own heads. This storm continued about two hours, alternating now and then with a calm, to return again and again with sudden fury. At the end of that time, although it still rained sadly, I started for home, knowing that with rubber boots I could wade, if necessary, through any ordinary streams. The weather had turned so cold that an icy coating covered the meadow grass and the borders of the road, and promised not to melt away in haste. As I neared Kimball Farm, where Ball Brook meets Thompson’s stream, I found the road opposite the barns flooded,—like a river flowing across the road. It was far too deep for me to wade through, besides, the current was so strong that I should have been tripped had I ventured it. I had to walk some distance on the stone wall and over a heavy plank, which some one during a previous deluge had placed here for a high-water foot-bridge in an emergency. A walk up the hill, and I turned off the road, entering a path through the cow-pastures, to see the heaps of hail under the pines along Thompson’s Brook, which was a beautiful, roaring and seething torrent now, as it plunged and leaped down through its rocky flume to the valley below. As I came out on the highway again, at the bend in the road near Ball Farm, I heard the familiar voice of some one who had been sent in search of me. I was warmed with enthusiasm and interest in the storm’s ravages, and thoroughly enjoying my walk. However, I was grateful for a ride home. Passing by School Fourteen, we saw the prudent teacher scanning the sky before she ventured forth. We noticed many broken panes of glass in the schoolhouse windows, while dozens were shattered in the houses along the way.