midday
For days at a time the big trees moaned ceaselessly ; often the snow fell silently all through the day , all through the bitter cold of the night , until the knotted arms of the hemlock were cruelly laden to the cracking point , and the moose hopple and scrub pines lay smothered up to their tops . Always the crying wind and the driving snow . As the winter wore itself out the sun began to assert its warmth . All things now steamed at midday , dripping and oozing in sheer gratefulness ; the snow became so soft that even the tail of a wood mouse slushed a gash in it , the dripping hemlocks perforating the snow beneath them with myriads of holes . Soon the woods were oozing in earnest , the warm sun swelling the young buds . Day by day the roar of Big Shanty Brook grew mightier , its waters sweeping over the boulders with the speed of a mill race , tearing away its crumbling banks . With the opening of spring Holcomb started work in earnest .