Until the day break

Abstract

The last big storm of winter began blowing on the seventeenth of March. It blew hard all that day and night, and the next day the wind went away, but the snow continued falling until almost dark. The forest took it without protest, the snow bending the shaggy limbs of trees with the weight of its soft mantle. Up on the summits of the ridges, when the wind blew, the gnarled and twisted trees clung close to the rocky slop.es that glistened with ice, but down in the valley the tall yellow pines only shivered a little, moaning softly to themselves. When the wind was gone, and the snow came down almost straight, drifting idly, the valley was filled with a deep peace and quietude, whiteness covering whiteness, and there was a kind of happy loneliness and solitude, the trees half-slumbering like old men dreaming in their gardens.