The long hills where the boys coasted looked like slopes of silver.

Ephraim had to go to bed at eight.

He lay, well propped up on pillows, in his little bedroom, and he could hear the shouts of the coasting boys.
Now that he could breathe more easily the superiority of his enforced deprivation of such joys no longer comforted him as much as it had done.

His curtain was up, and the moonlight lay on his bed.

The mystic influence of that strange white orb which moves the soul of the lover to dream of love and yearnings after it, which saddens with sweet wounds the soul who has lost it forever, which increases the terrible freedom of the maniac, and perhaps moves the tides, apparently increased the longing in the heart of one poor boy for all the innocent hilarity of his youth which he had missed.
Ephraim lay there in the moonlight, and longed as he had never longed before to go forth and run and play and halloo, to career down those wonderful shining slants of snow, to be free and equal with those other boys, whose hearts told off their healthy lives after the Creator's plan.
The clock in the kitchen struck nine, then ten.