1 The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy corners.
2 As he strode along through the snow the sense of such meanings glowed in his brain and mingled with the bodily flush produced by his sharp tramp.
3 To keep out of range of the revealing rays from within he made a circuit through the untrodden snow and gradually approached the farther angle of the basement wall.
4 A moment later he heard the jingle of departing sleigh bells and discerned a figure advancing alone toward the empty expanse of snow before the church.
5 The night was so still that they heard the frozen snow crackle under their feet.
6 They turned in at the gate and passed under the shaded knoll where, enclosed in a low fence, the Frome grave-stones slanted at crazy angles through the snow.
7 "It might have fallen off into the snow," Mattie continued, after a pause during which they had stood intently listening.
8 "Guess you forgot about us, Zeena," Ethan joked, stamping the snow from his boots.
9 "You might 'a' shook off that snow outside," she said to her husband.
10 It was part of the sun's red and of the pure glitter on the snow.
11 The afternoon was drawing to an end, and here and there a lighted pane spangled the cold gray dusk and made the snow look whiter.
12 The cold was less sharp than earlier in the day and a thick fleecy sky threatened snow for the morrow.
13 They spoke of every-day things, of the prospect of snow, of the next church sociable, of the loves and quarrels of Starkfield.
14 But a wet snow, melting to sleet, had fallen in the night and turned the roads to glass.
15 At the kitchen door Daniel Byrne sat in his sleigh behind a big-boned grey who pawed the snow and swung his long head restlessly from side to side.