The spring being now too forward, a check to it was needful; and in the early part of March there came a change of weather.  All the young growth was arrested by a dry wind from the east, which made both face and fingers burn when a man was doing ditching.  The lilacs and the woodbines, just crowding forth in little tufts, close kernelling their blossom, were ruffled back, like a sleeve turned up, and nicked with brown at the corners.  In the hedges any man, unless his eyes were very dull, could see the mischief doing.  The russet of the young elm-bloom was fain to be in its scale again; but having pushed forth, there must be, and turn to a tawny colour.  The hangers of the hazel, too, having shed their dust to make the nuts, did not spread their little combs and dry them, as they ought to do; but shrivelled at the base and fell, as if a knife had cut them.  And more than all to notice was (at least about the hedges) the shuddering of everything and the shivering sound among them toward the feeble sun; such as we make to a poor fireplace when several doors are open.  Sometimes I put my face to warm against the soft, rough maple-stem, which feels like the foot of a red deer; but the pitiless east wind came through all, and took and shook the caved hedge aback till its knees were knocking together, and nothing could be shelter.  Then would any one having blood, and trying to keep at home with it, run to a sturdy tree and hope to eat his food behind it, and look for a little sun to come and warm his feet in the shelter.  And if it did he might strike his breast, and try to think he was warmer.

But when a man came home at night, after long day’s labour, knowing that the days increased, and so his care should multiply; still he found enough of light to show him what the day had done against him in his garden.  Every ridge of new-turned earth looked like an old man’s muscles, honeycombed, and standing out void of spring, and powdery.  Every plant that had rejoiced in passing such a winter now was cowering, turned away, unfit to meet the consequence.  Flowing sap had stopped its course; fluted lines showed want of food, and if you pinched the topmost spray, there was no rebound or firmness.

We think a good deal, in a quiet way, when people ask us about them—­of some fine, upstanding pear-trees, grafted by my grandfather, who had been very greatly respected.  And he got those grafts by sheltering a poor Italian soldier, in the time of James the First, a man who never could do enough to show his grateful memories.  How he came to our place is a very difficult story, which I never understood rightly, having heard it from my mother.  At any rate, there the pear-trees were, and there they are to this very day; and I wish every one could taste their fruit, old as they are, and rugged.