But," he continued, seating himself on Bill's chopping log and meditatively cleaning out his pipe bowl with a bit of chip, "there _are_ some youngsters who have a fashion of getting themselves born right in the worst of the cold weather--and that not here in Silverwater neither, but way up north, where weather is weather, let me tell you--where it gets so cold that, if you were foolish enough to cry, the tears would all freeze instantly, till your eyes were shut up in a regular ice jam." "I wouldn't cry," declared the Child.
"No?
But I don't want you to interrupt me any more." "Of course not," said the Child politely.

Uncle Andy eyed him searchingly, and then decided to go on.
"Away up north," he began abruptly--and paused to light his pipe--"away up north, as I was saying, it was just midwinter.

It was also midnight--which, in those latitudes, is another way of saying the same thing.

The land as far as eye could see in every direction was flat, dead white, and smooth as a table, except for the long curving windrows into which the hard snow had been licked up by weeks of screaming wind.
Just now the wind was still.

The sky was like black steel sown with diamonds, and the stars seemed to snap under the terrific cold.