We, too, felt strangely drowsy; but yet, with all the curiosity of youth, would not yield to it, so anxious were we to see this snow of which we had heard so often. The wind whistled in stronger and stronger gusts, making weird wailing sounds among the bare branches; the sky, already one uniform mass of greyish cloud, grew duller and thicker, while up to windward a darkness like that of the winter twilight began to cover the land. Rusty and I, peering out through a small hole in the moss, saw the great trees bending and swaying in the increasing blast, while the dead leaves raised by the wind rustled and rattled in brown clouds along the ground below. Then suddenly, and as if by magic, the whole air was swarming with little white atoms, which whirled and fluttered silently in a mad dance. Thicker and thicker they came till the sky was blotted out, and even the trees close by were nearly hidden behind the waving white veil. All along the eastern edges of the beech-tree limbs lines of pure white appeared and grew, while the dry leaves below stopped their rustling as they vanished, hidden beneath a carpet whiter than fallen hawthorn petals. To us, who had never seen the like before, it was a wonderful sight, and we gazed and gazed as if we should never tire. But gradually the drowsiness of the snow-sleep came upon us and mastered us, and, whether we would or no, closed our eyes. Rusty slipped limply back, and lay like a dead thing beside the quiet forms of Hazel and my mother. I remember vaguely pushing back the plug of moss into position, and then I, too, fell back and sank away into a long, delicious, dreamless slumber. * * * * * It may have been a day, or a week, or, for all I know, a month before I woke again. My sleep had been so deep that for a full minute I was quite unable to realize where I was or what had happened, and I lay contentedly still in that pleasant, dreamy state between sleep and wakefulness. Then my eye was caught by a tiny brilliant sunbeam, which, striking through some minute interstice in the mossy door, made a little path of golden light in which little motes of dust danced gaily across our hollow retreat. Slowly recollection returned, and with it a feeling of perfectly ravenous hunger. Struggling up out of the deep hollow in my mossy bed into which I had sunk, I stretched, yawned, and, looking round, saw Rusty with one eye open gazing at me with a drowsy, puzzled expression. Mother and Hazel were still wrapped in deepest sleep. I barked to wake Rusty; but he only blinked at me without speaking, until at last I leant over and nipped his ear. That woke him. ‘Weasel take you, Scud!’ he growled, starting up. ‘Your teeth are sharp.’ I told him I was simply starving. ‘Come to think of it, so am I,’ he said, stretching and yawning in his turn. ‘Let’s go and get some grub.’