I was not at all surprised at meeting him there. I showed him the church and asked him what it was. "It was for you," he said. "I was afraid that you would not find the avenue of chestnut trees, and I hung up a lantern on each side." I felt all confused. It was only a few moments afterwards that I understood that the great pillars, blackened and worn by centuries, were simply the trunks of the chestnut trees, and then I recognized the small-paned windows of the farmhouse kitchen, which the fire lit up from inside. Eugène counted the sheep himself. He helped me to make them a warm litter of straw, and as we left the pen together he asked me if I really didn't know what had become of the two lambs that had been lost. I felt dreadfully ashamed at the thought that he could believe that I had told a lie, and I could not help crying, and told him that they had disappeared without my having seen how or where they went. Then he told me that he had found them drowned in a water-hole. I thought he was going to scold me for not having watched them better, but he said gently, "Go and get warm; you have got all the rime of Sologne in your hair." I made up my mind that I would go and see the waterhole. But during the night snow fell so quickly that we couldn't go out to the fields next day.
I helped old Bibiche to mend the household linen; Martine sat down to her spinning wheel, and I sang to them while we sewed and Martine span.
While we sat at work that evening the dogs never stopped barking. Martine seemed anxious. She listened to the dogs, and then turning to the farmer she said, "I am afraid this weather will bring the wolves down." The farmer got up to go out and talk to the dogs, and took his lantern to make a round of the outhouses. During the week that the snow lasted hundreds of crows came to the farm. They were so hungry that nothing frightened them. They went into the cow-house and the pens and into the granary, and they made very free with the corn ricks. The farmer killed a lot of them. We cooked some of them with bacon and cabbage. Everybody thought them very good, but the dogs wouldn't eat them.
The first day we let the sheep and cows out, the pine trees were still heavy with snow. The hill was all white too. It seemed to have come closer to the farm. All this white dazzled me. I could not find things in their places, and every moment I was afraid that I should not see the blue smoke curling up over the farm roofs any longer. The sheep could not find anything to eat, and ran about searching. I did not let them scatter too much. They looked like moving snow, and I was obliged to watch them closely so as not to lose sight of them. I managed to get them together in a meadow which skirted a big wood. The whole forest was busy getting rid of the snow which weighed it down. The big branches threw the snow off at one shake, while the others which were not so strong, stooped and bent themselves to make it slip down. I had never been into this forest. I only knew that it was a very big one, and that Martine sometimes took her sheep there. The pine trees were very tall, and the ferns grew very high.