When the winter set in at Eureka Valley, and it set in very early, it commenced snowing. It never really stopped snowing until the next spring. There were intervals of more or less hours when it did not snow, but there was always snow in the air; always somewhere in the heavens that grayish-whitey look of the snow cloud; always that peculiar chill and smell, too, which betoken snow. It snowed when we went to bed; it was snowing when we got up; it snowed all day, or at intervals during the day; it was ever monotonously busy, busy; sometimes big flakes, sometimes little flakes coming down, down, down; coming deliberately straight down, or driving furiously in our faces, or crossing and recrossing in zigzag lines. The snow heavens seemed but a few feet above the mountain-tops; they looked heavy and full of snow, and gave one a crushing sensation. We seemed just between two great bodies of snow, one above our heads, one lying on the ground. Our house, whose ridge-pole was full eighteen feet from the ground, began gradually to disappear. At intervals of three or four days it was necessary to shovel the snow from the roof, which would otherwise have been crushed in. This added to the accumulation about us. Snow covered up the windows and mounted to the eaves. The path to the spring was through a cut high above our heads. That to the barn was through another similar. Snow all about us lay at an average depth of eight feet. Only the sloping roof of the house was visible, and so much in color did it assimilate with the surrounding rocks, pines, and snow that one unacquainted with the locality might have passed within a few feet of it without recognizing it as a human residence.