And they were safe. It was late in the afternoon the next day when George, having left the wagon at the mill, came floundering behind the horse through the unbroken road into the streets of the junction, to find Herbert anxiously waiting for him, and the turkeys, with full crops, trying hard to go to roost inside their double-decked car. CHAPTER III WHITE-FOOT The December rain was falling down, down, down, as if the drops were lead instead of water. The December sky, if you could call it sky, had settled down, down, down, as if it too were of lead, and were being propped up only by the tops of the stiff bare trees. A green stick in the fireplace behind me sizzled and sputtered and blew its small steam whistles to warn me away from the window,--from the sight of the naked trees, and the cold, thick fog upon the meadow, and the blur of the pine woods beyond, and the rain falling down, down, down. A dreary world out of doors surely, with not a sign of life! The pine tree, rising up above the hillside in front of the window, was green, but only a few lifeless leaves rattled among the middle branches of the oaks, while up in the stark top of a hickory sapling was wedged a robin’s nest, deserted and wet and going to pieces. I shivered, in spite of the hearth-fire behind me, for the face of the gray gloom pressed close up against the window outside. And the empty robin’s nest, already a ruin! its mud walls broken, its tiny timbers hanging loose in the rain! But what a large nest for a robin, I thought; and how strangely peaked and pointed it is, like a little haycock! Then all at once, inside of me, and all over me, I felt a warm, delightful feeling. “It isn’t possible,” said I aloud, but all to myself; “it isn’t possible that little White-Foot has moved into that old robin’s nest and fitted it up with a peaked roof for the winter?” And the thought of it started the warm, delightful feeling again inside of me and all over me; and snatching up the tongs by the fireplace I ran out into the December rain and tapped a few times on the slender hickory sapling. And what do you think happened? It stopped raining? No. You broke your tongs? No. The nest fell out and hit you on the head? No. You ran back into the house again out of the rain? Yes, I did, and I went straight to the window and looked out again at the robin’s nest,--my deserted, ruined robin’s nest, with its thick thatch of waterproof cedar bark, with its little round door-hole in the side, with its soft furry bed, all toasty warm, out of which with my tapping tongs I had just roused White-Foot and brought him sleepy-eyed to look down at me from his door. The rain continued to fall down; but my spirits went up, and up, at the thought of that little mouse all safe and warm for the winter in Robin’s deserted nest.