It had again frozen during the night, and as the frost came after a couple of mild days and damp fogs, the trees were all covered over with a moss-like growth of glassy crystals. The sun had come out of the clouds, and shone in a clear blue sky, with only the thinnest and most transparent veil of haze; but it shone palely, coldly, like the Host in the Monstrance, warming nothing. The frost had grown harder as the day advanced, and of such severity and penetration that it almost took the breath away, and raised a cloud of condensed vapour round every living being. Yet the world was steeped in bright sunshine, and radiant with glittering splendour; on every side the sparkling snow seemed oversprinkled with a dew of diamond-like scintillation. The surrounding fields, buried under their white pall, lay refulgent, but dead. Now and then a bird passed, flapping over their pure expanse, while its black shadow glided along the ground below; or a covey of partridges clucked amongst the snow-laden bushes, with timorous watchfulness and stealth, drawing near to the dwellings of men and their cornstacks crammed with grain. Elsewhere a hare would show its dark form, leaping through the drifts, or standing on its hind legs, or gnawing to get at the garnered corn, but—alarmed by the barking of the dogs,—scamper back to the great forest, where every tree was tufted with hoarfrost. A keen piercing cold, luminous with glacial sheen, now shimmered over the whole world, and plunged it in icebound stillness. Not a single cry broke the hard silence of the country-side, no living voice resounded, no breath of wind whispered amongst those glistening arid fields of snow. Only at rare intervals, from the roads half buried in the drifts, did faint-voiced bells and the stridulous creaking of a sledge strike the ear, so feeble and so far off that they were all but inaudible, and no one could tell whence it came or whither it went, ere the sound again faded into utter silence.