1 In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires.
2 The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold.
3 But it was not only that the coming to his house of a bit of hopeful young life was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth.
4 One cold winter morning, as he dressed in the dark, his candle flickering in the draught of the ill-fitting window, he had heard her speak from the bed behind him.
5 Here and there a farmhouse stood far back among the fields, mute and cold as a grave-stone.
6 She drew aside without speaking, and Mattie and Ethan passed into the kitchen, which had the deadly chill of a vault after the dry cold of the night.
7 It is powerful cold down here, Ethan assented; and with lowered head he went up in his wife's wake, and followed her across the threshold of their room.
8 He had been afraid that she would hate the hard life, the cold and loneliness; but not a sign of discontent escaped her.
9 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.
10 The cold was less sharp than earlier in the day and a thick fleecy sky threatened snow for the morrow.
11 A mournful peace hung on the fields, as though they felt the relaxing grasp of the cold and stretched themselves in their long winter sleep.
12 Then she recrossed the floor and lifted two of the geranium pots in her arms, moving them away from the cold window.
13 He gazed blankly about the kitchen, which looked cold and squalid in the rainy winter twilight.
14 "You're letting your supper get cold," she admonished him with a pale gleam of gaiety.
15 Going into his cold dark "study" he placed the lantern on the table and, stooping to its light, read the message again and again.