Dozing by the fire over her seed catalogues, Sarah Kimball was startled by rumbling far away in the covered bridge. A minute later she heard the whine of a motor, mounting the zigzags that led up Barker's Hill. Dreams of summer squash and beefsteak tomatoes, of zinnias and tea roses, dissolved: she woke again to the bright encirclement of the New Hampshire winter.

She winced as the tires of the invader scuffled at the turns in the icy road. Excursions up the hill were rare in November. The summer folk had shuttered their houses months ago; even the last fraternity of hunters had broken up and left the rocky fields. Stafford had been handed back to the "natives," a category to which the village had finally assimilated her. ("You're Boston," the sheriff had told her, "but you've lived here a sight longer than many. And it's not every day we can have an ambassador on the Council.") Except for the chugging of the postman's truck or the automobiles of strayed skiers from the Notch, these were the days of silence and secret snow. It sifted down over her garden at night; at dawn there were always tracks. Raccoons: they were the fussiest feeders, nibbling at a whole succession of carrot tops. Only last week the ambassador had glimpsed through the naked trees the dark bulk of a bear, lumbering back into the woods. My companion, she had thought, my companion in hibernation.