Before morning the wind was blowing a wild gale from the south, rain was pouring in torrents and we were evidently on the outer edge of a winter hurricane that had been well up the coast, perhaps as far as Nantucket, when the pond began to talk about it. No; I do not think changes in temperature have much to do with it. My explanation for the scientist is that these noises begin with a drop in the atmospheric pressure, a region of low barometer moving up in advance of the storm. Taking the pressure quite suddenly off the ice would start all the air imprisoned in solution beneath it to pushing upward for a chance to get away. No wonder it groans and whoops with all that wind in its wame. But privately I am not so sure. We have so many sure-thing theories, and so much definite knowledge to-day that to-morrow is all discredited and cast aside leaving us groping for another theory, that it is just as easy to believe myself eavesdropping at telephone talk between giants. That particular night it sounded to me like Hercules on his way up from Hades with Cerberus under his arm and a bit over-anxious lest the deities fail to have the dog pound ready for him on arrival in the upper regions--but of course that’s pagan myth. Anyway it was a great uproar. I fancy winter ice makes the same outcry on other ponds, though I never happened to hear it anywhere else. To-day the ice was quiet enough on my side of the pond, though you could see where it had been at work. With the west wind as team mate it was dredging and grading over on the east shore. This is the every-day winter work of thick ice. It picks up big rocks on the beach and carries them off into deep water or moves them up or down the shore as it sees fit. But always it pushes back the sand and gravel and stones on low shores and steadily builds them up till you find wide shallow ridges between the water’s edge and the slope of the land farther ashore. My pond is very young, scarcely three-quarters of a century old, yet it shows marked evidence of this work all along shore. When ice is thick and the wind strong, especially toward spring when there is apt to be free water along the edge, you may stand by and see the dredging effect at work, see the low, long mound of gravel or sand slide backward up the beach while the edge of the floe crumples and grinds and crumbles, but still moves irresistibly to its work.