A sleepy small boy, stuffed with popcorn, leans on his father's knee in the firelight. He thinks of molasses-candy hair, the stars twinkle at the frosty windows, the night wind blows, the firelight makes shadows dance huge over the ceiling. The boy hugs his gun and dog to him; he goes down the steep hill of sleep.
Now the days come shining, the days come snowing. The old calendar goes into the stove, and the new is hung up back of the wood box. The new almanac is hung by the mantel. The baby stands alone, teetering, for the first time. He has joined the upright animals for good. He crows and falls on his face. But he knows now where he belongs, and he will be up there again.
The Arctic owl comes back from the north, scaling home into the spruces on the white wings of a snow squall. He finds his old seat on the people stump, which fits his contours so well, and he looks over the young rabbits to pick out his supper. Winter is here for keeps. The field mice extend their tunnels under the snow, the barn mice gnaw new doorways in the grain bin, and the house mice creep to the cheese by a new street. The bees creep to a new comb in the hive. The crows hug their spiny roosts and have nothing to creep to at all.
The hired man grows restless nights. His love-sorrow has healed now, and he burns to try out his Christmas socks in the drifts. His big tracks make wider and wider circles each night around the farm. He is looking for a farmhouse where there are no tracks of a man on the snow.
The small boy goes into the firs to try out his new rifle. The yellow dog finds so many fresh tracks he cannot decide which rabbit to run and fills the woods with yelps. A squirrel laughs at the dog from a high limb, but his laughter is cut short, and there will be squirrel soup for supper. The new rifle has its first notch! The boy dangles with five squirrel tails when he stops in at the Molasses-Candy Girl's house on his way home to look over her presents and her. He promises her the best of the skins for a doll's coat. He walks home feeling big and toeing out like a man.
And the hired man finds his widow. She is nine farms away, she is not so plump as the other one, she has a mole on her left cheek, her house is not so large, and she has three boys full of the Old Harry. But a widow is a widow. And the boys can be broken into use at the bucksaw. They need a father's hand on their pert, untamed breeches. So the washbasin comes into use again, and the comb goes through a moustache that crackles with electricity and love. The year is not a total loss after all.
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