Knowing the view would there be least obstructed, I walked leisurely to a high knoll in the lower meadows, leaving a curiously dark streak behind me where I brushed away the frost as I passed. Not a bird greeted me. The sparrows and chickadees of yesterday were still asleep. The crackling of brittle twigs beneath my feet was the only sound I heard, save, of course, the blended voices of the distant crows. The brightening of the eastern sky proceeded slowly. Cloud above cloud threatened to shut out the light until the day had well advanced; while from the river rose a filmy bank of smoke-like fog that settled in huge masses over the intervening marshes. But still the crows were clamorous, and I had been told that their songs at sunrise augured a fair day; so, ’twixt hope and fear, I reached the high knoll in my neighbor’s meadow. It was at the nick of time. Without a heralding ray in the whole horizon, a flood of rosy light leaped through a rift in the clouds and every cold gray crystal of the frost glowed with ruddy warmth. Then deafening loud was the din of the foraging crows, as though they exulted at the fullfillment of their prediction; and from that moment on, the day was beautiful. And if crows could be so enthusiastic over a bright winter day, why not other birds? What of that host of arctic finches that tarry with us until spring? I listened in vain for the foxie sparrow’s warble, the call of the Peabody bird, and whistling of the purple finch. These were all here yesterday and making merry; now every one was mute. The ceaseless cawing of the crows may have drowned their voices, but I think not. However, in other ways and no less cheerful ones, the vivifying effect of sunrise was soon apparent everywhere about me.