Yet, since the priest had said it ...
The road wound its way among the trees rising sombrely from the snow.

Here and there a squirrel, alarmed by the swiftly passing sleigh and the tinkling bells, sprang upon a trunk and scrambled upward, clinging to the bark.

From the gray sky a biting cold was falling and the wind stung the cheek, for this was February, with two long months of winter yet to come.
As Charles Eugene trotted along the beaten road, bearing the travellers to their lonely house, Maria, in obedience to the words of the cure at St.Henri, strove to drive away gloom and put mourning from her; as simple-mindedly as she would have fought the temptation of a dance, of a doubtful amusement or anything that was plainly wrong and hence forbidden.
They reached home as night was falling.

The coming of evening was only a slow fading of the light, for, since morning, the heavens had been overcast, the sun obscured.

A sadness rested upon the pallid earth; the firs and cypresses did not wear the aspect of living trees and the naked birches seemed to doubt of the springtime.