The next morning there took place in a few hours a great change in the temperature.

It moderated rapidly.

The frost on the windows and the ice-ridges in the roads did not soften yet, since the sun was overcast by heavy clouds, but the terrible rigor and tension of the cold was relaxed, and men could breathe without constraint.

At eight o'clock, when Jim Otis and Madelon started for Ware Centre, there was a white film of fallen snow over the distant hills and scattering flakes drove in advance of the storm.
A mile out of Kingston it snowed hard.

"Hadn't you better have that extra shawl mother put in over your shoulders ?" Jim Otis suggested.
But Madelon shook her head.