The old man was rock-like in his physical strength.
Trenholme looked round about, but there was certainly no help to be obtained.

On the one side he saw the birch wood indistinctly; the white trunks half vanished from sight against the white ground, but the brush of upper branches hung like the mirage of a forest between heaven and earth.

All round was the wild region of snow.

From his own small house the lamp which he had left on the table shot out a long bright ray through a chink in the frostwork on the window.

It occurred to him that when he had fetched down the lamp it was probably this ray, sudden and unexpected in such a place, that had attracted his strange visitor to his house.