' I never before knew a thrush make so unmistakable
an appeal for assistance, or deliberately approach so near (unless
previously encouraged). We tried to feed him, but we fear little of the
food reached him. The wonder of the incident was that a thrush should
still be left--there had not been one in the garden for two months.
Berries all gone, ground hard and foodless, streams frozen, snow lying
for weeks, frost stealing away the vital heat--ingenuity could not devise
a more terrible scene of torture to the birds. Neither for the thrushes
nor for the new-born infants in the tent did the onslaught of the winter
slacken. No pity in earth or heaven. This one thrush did, indeed, by some
exceptional fortune, survive; but where were the family of thrushes that
had sung so sweetly in the rainy autumn? Where were the blackbirds?
Looking down from the stilts of seven hundred feet into the deep coombe
of black oaks standing in the white snow, day by day, built round about
with the rugged mound of the hills, doubly locked with the key of
frost--it seemed to me to take on itself the actuality of the ancient
faith of the Magi. How the seeds of all living things--the germs--of bird
and animal, man and insect, tree and herb, of the whole earth--were
gathered together into a four-square rampart, and there laid to sleep in
safety, shielded by a spell-bound fortification against the coming flood,
not of water, but of frost and snow! With snow and frost and winter the
earth was overcome, and the world perished, stricken dumb and dead, swept
clean and utterly destroyed--a winter of the gods, the silence of snow
and universal death.
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