But the clock has struck six, and we will walk to the door to see if the tempest still rages. What a glorious night! The moon is out, sailing high up in heaven, with a calm mystic majesty that fills the soul with untold peace. Far away on the horizon floats a misty veil—while here and there, in the sky, a cloud still lingers, its dark body seeming like velvet on an azure ground, and its edges turned up with silver. There are a thousand stars on the frosty snow; for every tiny crystal that shoots out into the moonshine glistens all diamond-like; and, as you walk, ten thousand new crystals open to the light, until the whole landscape seems alive with millions of gems. Hark! how the hard crust crackles under the tread. If you put your ear to the ground you will hear a multitude of almost inarticulate sounds as if the sharp moon-beams were splintering the snow—but it is only the shooting of myriads of crystals. There have been icicles forming all day from yonder twig, and now as we shake the tree, you may hear them tinkling, one by one, to the ground, with a clear silvery tone, like the ringing of a bell miles off among the hills. Early in the afternoon, the snow melted on the river, but towards nightfall the stream became clogged, and now the frost is “breathing a blue film” from shore to shore—and to-morrow the whole surface will be smooth as glass, and the steel of the skater will be ringing sharp along the ice. How keen was that gust!—you may hear its dying cadence moaning away in the distance, like the wail of a lost child in a forest. Hush! was that a whistle down in the wood?