They were not even asleep, else their jump at a touch would not have been so prompt. [Illustration: The Pines in Winter] The frost goes deepest in the densely compacted earth, probably because of the density; the fewer the air cells the better the conductor. In fluffy soil, especially in the peaty margins of the pond where the earth granules are large and loose and there is much moisture, freezing produces a singular and beautiful result. The ice seems to crystallize away from the peat in which the water was ensponged, not in a compact body nor yet in feathery crystals, either of which one might expect, but in closely parallel, upright cylinders from the size of a knitting needle to that of a slim lead pencil. These are often several inches long and stand erect at the surface by the thousand, touching but not cohering, ready to crumble to fragments at the pressure of the foot but shielding the peat below from the cold. The ice on the pond may be solid enough to bear you, but when you step on this peaty edge you go down into the liquid mud beneath. Here you have reproduced in fragile miniature the same result as happened at the Giant's Causeway on the sea margin at the northeast corner of Ireland. There a long vein of once liquid basalt, freezing suddenly ages ago, left a great ridge of close-packed, vertical rock crystals running out an unknown distance into the sea. ***** With the good old rock-ribbed New England earth in winter quarters and the surface vocal with Jeremiahs clamoring for snow, it had to come. The incantations of these raised a witch whirl in that mysterious source of all our storms, the region along the tropic of Capricorn, in the Gulf of Mexico. Up the coast it came, with the weather bureau flying storm flags in its honor from Palm Beach to the Penobscot, boring into the freezing temperature and clear air that the North wind had spread around us, obscuring all the sky in the dun clouds of conflict. The young moon threw her clasped hands to a point of slender flame above her head and drowned in it. Aunt Sue's snowbank had circled the horizon and was rising steadily toward the zenith.