Mother says that the cat lay on her bread one night and caused it to rise finely all around her.

  I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i.e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice,—which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken . The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick . . .

  Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving away. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works . . .

  Our young maltesc cat which has been absent five cold nights, the ground covered deep with crusted snow,—her first absence,—and given up for dead, has at length returned at daylight, awakening the whole house with her mewing . . . Various are the conjectures as to her addventures,—whether she has had a fit, been shut up somewhere, or lost, torn in pieces by a certain terrier or frozen to death. In the meanwhile she is fed with all the best that the house affords, minced meats and saucers of warmed milk, and, with the aid of unstinted sleep in all laps in succession, is fast picking up her crumbs. She has already found her old place under the stove, and is preparing to make a stew of her brains there . . .