People shook their heads, and said that old times had come again, and no mistake.

There was eager pride in the lowest mercury, and the man whose thermometer registered thirty degrees below zero was happier than he who could boast but of twenty-five.

There was not so much snow as in milder seasons, but the cold held without breaking, week after week: clear weather; no wind, but the air taking the breath from the dryness of it, and in the evening the haze hanging blue and low that tells of intensest cold.

As the snow fell, it remained.

The drifts and hollows never changed their shape, as in a soft or a windy season, but seemed fixed as they were for all time.