The deeper snow was still quite soft, and Redruff bored his way to the top, but there the hard, white sheet defied his strength.  Hammer and struggle as he might he could make no impression, and only bruised his wings and head.  His life had been made up of keen joys and dull hardships, with frequent sudden desperate straits, but this seemed the hardest brunt of all, as the slow hours wore on and found him weakening with his struggles, but no nearer to freedom.  He could hear the struggling of his family, too, or sometimes heard them calling to him for help with their long-drawn plaintive ’p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e, p-e-e-e-e-e-t-e.’

They were hidden from many of their enemies, but not from the pangs of hunger, and when the night came down the weary prisoners, worn out with hunger and useless toil, grew quiet in despair.  At first they had been afraid the fox would come and find them imprisoned there at his mercy, but as the second night went slowly by they no longer cared, and even wished he would come and break the crusted snow, and so give them at least a fighting chance for life.

But when the fox really did come padding over the frozen drift, the deep-laid love of life revived, and they crouched in utter stillness till he passed.  The second day was one of driving storm.  The north wind sent his snow-horses, hissing and careering over the white earth, tossing and curling their white manes and kicking up more snow as they dashed on.  The long, hard grinding of the granular snow seemed to be thinning the snow-crust, for though far from dark below, it kept on growing lighter.  Redruff had pecked and pecked at the under side all day, till his head ached and his bill was wearing blunt, but when the sun went down he seemed as far as ever from escape.  The night passed like the others, except no fox went trotting overhead.  In the morning he renewed his pecking, though now with scarcely any force, and the voices or struggles of the others were no more heard.  As the daylight grew stronger he could see that his long efforts had made a brighter spot above him in the snow, and he continued feebly pecking.  Outside, the storm-horses kept on trampling all day, the crust was really growing thin under their heels, and late that afternoon his bill went through into the open air.  New life came with this gain, and he pecked away, till just before the sun went down he had made a hole that his head, his neck, and his ever-beautiful ruffs could pass.  His great, broad shoulders were too large, but he could now strike downward, which gave him fourfold force; the snow-crust crumbled quickly, and in a little while he sprang from his icy prison once more free.  But the young ones!  Redruff flew to the nearest bank, hastily gathered a few red hips to stay his gnawing hunger, then returned to the prison-drift and clucked and stamped.  He got only one reply, a feeble ‘peete, peete,’ and scratching with his sharp claws on the thinned granular sheet he soon broke through, and Graytail feebly crawled out of the hole.  But that was all; the others, scattered he could not tell where in the drift, made no reply, gave no sign of life, and he was forced to leave them.  When the snow melted in the spring their bodies came to view, skin, bones, and feathers—­nothing more.