Waterbury evening Democrat., 1903-12-10
By STEWART EDWARD WHITE
I9O2. by -cfsDerf Ed~ard uybif. :

the runners tight to the ground A tongue at either end obviated the ne- cessity of turning around.
 That night it turned warmer. The change was heraIded by a shift of wind
 Shes goin' to rain,'' said old Jack son. "The air is kind O holler.''
 "Hollow?" said Thorpe, laughing. '.How is that?"
 T don know confessed Hines, "but she Is. She just feels that way"
 In the morning the icicles dripped from the roof, and the snow became pockmarked on the surface
 Radway was down looking at the road
 She's heldin' her own," said he, 'fbut there ain't any use putting more water on her. She ain't freezing a mite. We'll blow her out"
 So they finished the job and plowed her out, leaving exposed the wet. marshy surface of the creek bottom, on which at night thin crust formed
 Shell freeze little tonight" said Radway hopefully. You sprinkler boys get at her and wet her down."
 Until 2 o'clock in the morning the four teams and the six men creaked back and forth spilling hardly gath cred water Then they crept in and ate sleepily the food that a, sleepy cookee set out for them.
 By morning the mere surface of the sprinkled water had frozen. Radway looked in despair at the sky. Dimly through the gray he caught the tint of blue.
 The sun came out. Nuthatches and woodpeckers ran gayly up the warm ing trunks of the trees; blue jays fluff ed and perked and screamed in the hardwood tops; q covey of grouse yen- tured from the swamp and strutted vainly, pause of contemplation be- tween each step. Railway, walking out on the tramped road of the marsh, cracked the artificial skin and thrust his foot through into icy water. That night the sprinklers stayed in.
 The devil seemed in 1t. Men were lying idle; teams were doing the same Nothing went on but the days of the year, and four of them had already ticked off the calendar. The deep snow of the unusually cold autumn had now disappeared from the tops of the stumps. It even stopped freezing dur ing the night. At times Dyer's little thermometer marked as high as 40 de grees.
 q often heard this was a sort " summer resort" observed Tom Broad s head, "but hanged if I knew it was a summer resort all the year roundF'
 By and by it got to be case of look ing on the bright side of the affair from pure reaction.
 T don't know" said Radway: 4.it won't be so bad, after all. A couple of days of zero weather. with all this wa ter lying around, would fix things up sn pretty good shape. If she only freezes tight we'll have good solid bottom to build on.'
 The inscrutable goddess of the will derness smiled and calmly, relentlessly, moved her next pawn.
 It was all so unutterably simple and yet so effective. It showed.
 All night and all day the great flakes zigzagged softly down through the air. Radway plowed away two feet of it. Ghe surface was promptly covered by a second storm. Ra@way doggedly plowed it out again.
 This time the goddess seemed to re- lent. The ground froze solid. The sprinklers became assiduous in their labor. Two days later the road was ready for the first sleigh, its surface of thick, glassy ice beautiful to be hold, the ruts cut deep end true, the glades sanded or sprinkYn& with re- tarding hay on the descents. At the river the banking ground proved solid. Radway breathed again, then sighed. Spring was eight days nearer. He was eight days more behind,
 As soon as loading began the cook served breakfast at 5 o'clock. The men worked by the light of torches, which were often merely catchup jugs with wicking in the necks. Nothing could be more picturesque than a teamster conducting one of his great pyramid teal loads over the little inequalities of the road, in the ticklish places stand