Last night, the snow fell, And then I began to remember. I remembered all the things that I had forgotten. Or so it had seemed,

But not forgotten after all. They were all there, stored away like treasures.

Last night the snow fell.

The sky had been darkening all afternoon, growing greyer and greyer, and swelling with snow. It must have been cold, too, bitter cold. You could see that it was cold. In here, I am never cold; there is always a small fire, even in summer. It's a small room, and rather dark, but brightened by the fire. The fire is quite enough

I sit by the window until it is dark - every day. And so I saw the cold, the air freezing.

There is a tree outside, one tree. Its branches are bare now. They bow down just beside my window, and the birds come - a sparrow, a robin, a blue tit, quick, quick, quick. And there is one bush, set against the wall, all scattered about with winter flowers, like bright, bright stars.

Beyond this window, where I sit, there is a little backyard. with my tree, the flowering bush, the little birds. And I can look up between the houses and see the sky.

Last night the snow fell, and then I began to remember. There is no one else left now, no one who remembers it all, Mother and Father are long dead. And brother Will, gone for a soldier, brother Will dead too.

And Nancy in the rectory kitchen; and Sam Hay, who whistled through the gap in his teeth and put up the swing for me in the apple tree bough in the garden. And m'lord at the Hall, and his lady, and their pale-faced, pale-haired daughter whose frock I so envied, and whose eyes were the colour of sea-washed stones, and who said to me, that Christmas time, quietly in a corner, 'I am a disappointment to them, because I am not a son.'

I told mother, who frowned. 'But you are precious,' she said.