TANGLEWOOD FIRESIDE. 117

for advising them to dig such a tumble-down cavern, the
children attacked him in a body, and so bepelted him
with snowballs that he was fain to take to his heels.

So he ran away, and went into the woods, and thence
_ to the margin of Shadow Brook, where he could hear the
streamlet grumbling along, under great overhanging
banks of snow and ice, which would scarcely let it see
the light of day. There were adamantine icicles glitter-
ing around all its little cascades. Thence he strolled to
the shore of the lake, and beheld a white, untrodden plain
before him, stretching from his own feet to the foot of
Monument Mountain. And, it being now almost sunset,
Hustace thought that he had never beheld anything so
fresh and beautiful as the scene. He was glad that the
children were not with him; for their lively spirits and
tumble-about activity would quite have chased away his
higher and graver mood, so that he would merely have
been merry (as he had already been, the whole day long),
and would not have known the loveliness of the winter
sunset among the hills.

When the sun was fairly down, our friend Eustace
went home to eat his supper. After the meal was over,
he betook himself to the study, with a purpose, I rather
imagine; to write an ode, or two or three sonnets, or
verses of some kind or other, in praise of the purple and
golden clouds which he had seen around the setting sun.
But, before he had hammered out the very first rhyme,
the door opened, and Primrose ana Periwinkle made
their appearance.

“Go away, children! I can’t be troubled with ycu