The wind stirred in the weighted pines; the snow lay on the ground. Hereand there on its smooth, white expanse footprints betokened the woodlandgentry abroad. In the pallid glister of the moon, even amid the sparse,bluish shadows of the leafless trees, one might discriminate theimpression of the pronged claw of the wild turkey, the short, swiftpaces of the mink, the padded, doglike paw of the wolf. A progress of ayet more ravening suggestion was intimated in great hoof-marks leadingto the door of a little log cabin all a-crouch in the grim grip ofwinter and loneliness and poverty on the slope of the mountain, amongheavy, outcropping ledges of rock and beetling, overhanging crags. Withicy ranges all around as far as the eye could reach, with the vast,instarred, dark sky above, it might seem as if sorrow, the world, thelaw could hardly take account of so slight a thing, so remote. Butsmoke was slowly stealing up from its stick-and-clay chimney, and itsclapboarded roof sheltered a group with scarcely the heart to mend thefire.