about four o'clock in
the afternoon
Nothing stirred the whole day -- no plume fell off the shrubs , the valley was as abstracted as a grove of death . I looked over at the tiny , half-buried farms away on the bare uplands beyond the valley hollow , and I thought of Tible in the snow , of the black witch-like little Mrs. Goyte . And the snow seemed to lay me bare to influences I wanted to escape . In the faint glow of the half-clear light that came about four o'clock in the afternoon , I was roused to see a motion in the snow away below , near where the thorn trees stood very black and dwarfed , like a little savage group , in the dismal white . I watched closely . Yes , there was a flapping and a struggle -- a big bird , it must be , labouring in the snow . I wondered .