Sunshine followed storm.

The winter sun was cresting the tree tops when Thoreau got out of his bed to build a fire in the big stove.

It was nine o'clock, and bitterly cold.

The frost lay thick upon the windows, with the sun staining it like the silver and gold of old cathedral glass, and as the fox breeder opened the cabin door to look at his thermometer he heard the snap and crack of that cold in the trees outside, and in the timbers of the log walls.

He always looked at the thermometer before he built his fire--a fixed habit in him; he wanted to know, first of all, whether it had been a good night for his foxes, and whether it had been too cold for the furred creatures of the forest to travel.