Still further down, where the wood ends in scattered bushes and withy-beds, the level shore of the shallow mere succeeds.  The once soft, oozy ground is now firm; the rushes are frozen stiff, and the ice for some distance out is darkened by the aquatic weeds frozen in it.  From here the wood, rising up the slope, comes into view at once—­the dark trees, the ash poles, the distant beeches, the white crest of the hill—­all still and calm under the moonlight.  The level white plain of ice behind stretches away, its real extent concealed by the islands of withy and the dark pines along the distant shore; while elsewhere the ice is not distinguishable from the almost equally level fields that join it.  Looking now more closely on the snow, the tracks of hares and rabbits that have crossed and recrossed the ice are visible.

In passing close to the withy-beds to return to the wood some branches have to be pushed aside and cause a slight noise.  Immediately a crowd of birds rise out of the withies, where they have been roosting, and scatter into the night.  They are redwings and thrushes; every withy-bed is full of them.  After wheeling about in the air they will presently return—­first one, then three or four, and finally the flock, to their roosting-place.

It is easy now to walk through the wood without making a noise:  there is room to pass between the stoles of ash; and the dead sticks that would have cracked under foot are covered with snow.  But be careful how you step; for in some places the snow has fallen upon a mass of leaves filling a swampy hollow.  Above there is a thin crust of snow, but under the leaves the oozy ground is still soft.

Upon the dark pines the snow has lodged, making the boughs bend downwards.  Where the slope becomes a hill the ash stoles and nut-tree bushes are far apart and thinner, so that there are wide white spaces around them.  Regaining now the top of the hill where the plain comes to the verge of the wood, there is a clear view down across the ash poles to the withies, the white mere, and the meadows below.  Everywhere silence, stillness, sleep.

In the high trees slumbering creatures; in the hedgerows, in the bushes, and the withies birds with feathers puffed out, slumbering; in the banks, under the very ground, dormant animals.  A quiet cold that at first does not seem cold because it is so quiet, but which gradually seizes on and stills the sap of plants and the blood of living things.  A ruthless frost, still, subtle, and irresistible, that will slay the bird on its perch and weaken the swift hare.

The most cruel of all things this snow and frost, because of the torture of hunger which the birds must feel even in their sleep.  But how beautiful the round full moon, the brilliant light, the white landscape, the graceful lines of the pine brought out by the snow, the hills yonder, and the stars rising above them!