CHAPTER XI.
The cold that winter was more persistent and severe in the mountains than down in Ashurst.
At Lockhaven the river had been frozen over for a month, even above the bridge and the mills, where the current was swiftest.

Long lines of sawdust, which had been coiling and whirling in the eddies, or stretching across the black seething water, were caught in the ice, or blown about with the powdered snow over its surface.
Rafts could not come down the river, so the mills had no work to do, for the logs on hand at the beginning of the cold snap had been sawed into long rough planks, and piled in the lumber-yards, ready to be rafted as soon as the thaw came.

The cold, still air was sweet with the fragrance of fresh pine boards, and the ground about the mills was covered with sawdust, so that footsteps fell as silently as though on velvet, instead of ringing sharp against the frozen ground.
John Ward, walking wearily home from a long visit to a sick woman, came, as he crossed the lumber-yards, upon a group of raftsmen; they had not heard his approach, and were talking loudly, with frequent bursts of drunken laughter.
It was towards evening; the sky had been threatening all day, and when the clouds lifted suddenly in the west, blown aside like tumultuous folds of a gray curtain, the red sun sent a flood of color across the wintry landscape; the bare branches of the trees were touched with light, and the pools of black, clear ice gleamed with frosty fire.

John's face had caught the radiance.
He had come up to the men so silently that he had been standing beside them a moment before they noticed him, and then Tom Davis, with a start of drunken fear, tried to hide the bottle which he held.
"Damn you, mate, you're spillin' it!" cried one of the others, making an unsteady lunge forward to seize the bottle.
"Let up, let up," said Tom thickly.

"Don't ye see the preacher ?" Though Davis was not one of his flock, he had the same reverence for the preacher which his congregation felt.