After the collapse of the printing business Bobby and Johnny turned to Bobby Junior and the little sleigh. They drove often, far into the country. It was the dead of winter. The country was wide and still and white. Against the prevailing note of the snow the patches of woods showed almost black. The landscape looked strangely flattened out, and bereft of life. Nevertheless that impression was false, for the little sleigh climbed and dipped over many hills and hollows; and the boys were continually seeing living things and their indications. Tracks of small animals embroidered the snow. Strange tame birds hopped here and there or rose and swept down wind with plaintive pipings that, in spite of their lack of fear, lent them a spirit of wildness akin to the aloof savaging of winter winds in bared trees. Bobby and Johnny recognized the snow buntings, tossing in compact big companies like flakes in a whirlwind, the unsoiled white effect of their plumage shaming the snow. Besides these were little red-polls, dressed warmly in magenta and brown for the winter, hopping and clinging among the seed-weeds exposed by the breezes; and hardy, impudent, harsh-voiced blue-jays, cloaking much villany and cunning under wondrous suits of clothes; and trim, neat cedar wax-wings, perching on elevated twigs, always apparently at leisure; in the woods, whole bands of chickadees and nuthatches, cruising it cheerfully, calling to each other in their varied notes, tiny atoms defying all the cold and famine Old Winter could bring. Once they were vastly excited to catch sight of a hoary, wide-winged monster sweeping like a ghost close to the snow. They surmised it might be a Great Snow Owl, like the stuffed one in the English library, but they never knew. And again, in some trees alongside the road, they came upon a large flock of stocky-built birds, a little smaller than robins, so tame that the boys drove beneath them and could see their thick bills, and the marvellous clarity of the sunset yellow of their heads, shading to twilight down their backs, to black night on their wings, barred by a strip of clear white moonlight. They agreed that these were most unusual-looking creatures. How unusual any naturalist would have been glad to tell them; for these were that great and prized rarity, the Evening Grosbeak. So, too, in the pine woods they were showered by bits of cones, and looked aloft to make out a distant little bird busily engaged in tearing the cones to pieces. They laughed at his industry, but would have been immensely interested could they have examined at close hand the Crossbill's beak and its singular adaption to just this task. And of course they remarked the stately deliberate-looking prints of the grouse; and the herded tramping of the quail. The winter was populous enough, in spite of its rigour. Some of its many creatures the boys knew; many more they did not; but you may be sure they saw all that did not exercise the closest ............