There were worse in the woods than
he,--worse, because all of their killing was pastime. The weasel must
kill to live, and if he gloated over the kill, why, what fault of his?
But the other weasel, the one with the blood-stained bag, he killed for
the love of killing. I was glad he was gone.
The crows were winging over toward their great roost in the pines when I
turned toward the town. They, too, had had good picking along the creek
flats and ditches of the meadows. Their powerful wing-beats and constant
play told of full crops and no fear for the night, already softly gray
across the white silent fields. The air was crisper; the snow began to
crackle under foot; the twigs creaked and rattled as I brushed along; a
brown beech leaf wavered down and skated with a thin scratch over the
crust; and pure as the snow-wrapped crystal world, and sweet as the
soft gray twilight, came the call of a quail.
The voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer were gone. The very face
of things had changed; all had been reduced, made plain, simple, single,
pure! There was less for the senses, but how much keener now their joy!
The wide landscape, the frosty air, the tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out
of the quiet of the falling twilight, the voice of the quail!
There is no day but is beautiful in the woods; and none more beautiful
than one like this Christmas Day,--warm and still and wrapped, to the
round red berries of the holly, in the magic of the snow.
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