COUNTRY LIFE
FROST was thick on the fields. By the gate the cart-ruts were like iron, and the sheep-tracks in the mud made an uneven surface completely unyielding to the foot. A yellow sunlight came through the trees, and a man with a pail hooked on his arm went off to feed some chickens enclosed in a wire-netted pen. Along the bottom of the copse at this time one often sees rabbits, but it was so cold that nothing moved on the ground although a fieldfare crossed the trees. The stream ran beneath a thin sheath of ice. In the heart of the hedge a wren was moving like a brown mouse, now down among the leaves that had hardened with ice and now up, almost to the top of the hawthorns' thick brush. On my way down the road I stopped to meet a horse that came to the gate. He was a young beast, and his coat was thick, giving off a great cloud of grey dust as I patted it. He wanted some- thing to eat, but there was not so much as a mouthful of unfrozen grass on the field, and he had tried that so often that there were icicles on the hair of his lower jaw and lip. I left him, wondering how he would stand through the cold night ahead. In the morning a thaw had come, and, for the sake of the horse, I was thankful to see it.
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