The sun was gone from all the little ravines on the way back from Hancock to Great Blue, and the chill of the fern-festooned shadow of the cliff that I had just left seemed to go with me all along. It was especially dark and chill in the little gully and I reached the summit of the big hill too late to find the sun. There, where daybreak had breathed of spring, nightfall shivered in the bite of winter winds. A million electric glints splintered the purple dusk to northward, but there was no warmth in them even when they fused into the glow of the great city. With the shadow of night the cruel grip of winter had shut down on the hilltop and I knew again, as I had known in the golden glow of the morning, that it was midwinter. The dwarfed and storm-toughened shrubs seemed to crouch a little closer to the adamantine earth, and their frost-stiffened twigs sang in the bitter north wind. I felt the chill in my own marrow and eagerly tramped the ringing granite toward home. SOME JANUARY BIRDS It seems to be our lot this winter to have April continually smiling up in the face of January. Again and again the north wind has come down upon us and set his adamantine face against all such folly. The turf has become flint; the ice has been eight inches thick on pond and placid stream, and the very next morning, maybe, the soft air has breathed of spring, and bluebirds have twittered deprecatingly as if glad to be here, but altogether ashamed to be found so out of season. As a matter of fact, of course, some bluebirds winter with us, but they don’t warble “cheerily O” in the teeth of the north winds. On those days you must seek them in the cuddly seclusion of dense evergreens, more than likely among close-set cedars where the blue cedar-berries are still sweet and plenty. But we have had many days in this January of 1909 when the bluebirds have had a right to feel called to at least take a hurried glimpse at the bird boxes or the holes in the old apple trees, just as people take a flying trip to the summer cottage on a warm Sunday; they know they can’t stay, but it is delightful to just look it over and plan. I think the crows, though they are tough old winter residents, have something of the same impulse to plan nests and make eyes and cooing conversation, one to another. To-day I heard, in the pine treetops of a little pasture wood where several pair nest every year, the unmistakable note. In that great song of Solomon which the whole out-door world will chorus in the full tide of spring the crows have the bass part, no doubt, but they sing it none the less musically. It is surprising what a croak can become, between lovers.