Toward the south lay a wood, while toward the north lay another wood. Between these woodlands spread the white, wintry plain. A road ran directly onward from the southern wood, and a road ran just as directly outward to the black woodland on the north. This broad and snowy road, cut by deep wheel ruts, trampled by many heavy footprints, was really all one road, but the blacksmith's shop, which stood midway between the two woodlands, and between the two parts of the road, seemed to cut it into two separate parts. The two colors, white and black, of which this landscape was composed, struck the eye powerfully, almost oppressively. All day long no other tone was to be seen but these two, but they filled so wide a space and were so very strongly marked, that they seemed to weigh down the picture and changed the loveliness, which it perhaps might have in summer, to mournful gloom. There stood the two black pine woods, like the frame of the picture, between heaven and earth. The sky was white with clouds and the earth with snow. Both the snow and the clouds were so white, that each reflected upon the other a painfully livid brightness. The road was white, but sharply cut by the shadows that lay in the wheel tracks and footprints. The blacksmith shop also was black and white. The shingled roof, from which the wind had swept the snow, was black, while the whitewashed walls beneath it were dirty white. Through the wide open doorway the interior of the smithy could be seen, like a cavern, and the smoke streaming out had made a sooty streak from the door to the eaves.