"Open the door for me!"
After this the night fell fast. The only sounds to be heard in the
valley were the minute readjustments of the ice of the brook as it
froze tighter and the distressed cries of the birds that had roosted
in the fir.
So the Tree entered the house.
III. THE LIGHTING OF THE CANDLES
During the night it turned bitter cold. When morning came the sky was
a turquoise and the wind a gale. The sun seemed to give out light but
not heat--to lavish its splendor but withhold its charity. Moist flesh
if it chanced to touch iron froze to it momentarily. So in whiter land
the tongue of the ermine freezes to the piece of greased metal used as
a trap and is caught and held there until the trapper returns or until
it starves--starves with food on its tongue.
The ground, wherever the stiff boots of a farmhand struck it, resisted
as rock. In the fetlocks of farm horses, as they moved shivering,
balls of ice rattled like shaken tacks. The little roughnesses of
woodland paths snapped off beneath the slow-searching hoofs of
fodder-seeking cattle like points of glass.
Within their wool the sheep were comforted.
On higher fields which had given back their moisture to the atmosphere
and now were dry, the swooping wind lifted the dust at intervals and
dragged it away in flaunting yellow veils.
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