Seven years before there had come such a winter, and the land had not forgotten it--a winter sudden and swift, deadly in its unexpectedness, terrific in its cold, bringing with it such famine and death as the Northland had not known for two generations.
But this year there was premonition.

Omen of it came with the first wailing night winds that bore the smell of icebergs from over the black forests north and west.

The moon came up red, and it went down red, and the sun came up red in the morning.

The loon's call died a month ahead of its time.

The wild geese drove steadily south when they should have been feeding from the Kogatuk to Baffin's Bay, and the beaver built his walls thick, and anchored his alders and his willows deep so that he would not starve when the ice grew heavy.