With Death and Cold and Murder!
He shouted it over the land.
The ice broke and split into long cracks. It sounded like thunder from the bottom of the river. It darkened, as when Summer’s thunder-storms used to gather over the valley, but worse still, for then you could perceive that it would all pass by, but now there was no hope to be seen.
Then the storm broke loose.
The gale roared so that you could hear the trees fall crashing in the forest. The ice was split in two and the huge floes heaped up into towering icebergs, while the water froze together again at once. The frost bit as deep into the ground as it could go and bit to death every living thing that it found in the mould. The snow fell and drifted over meadow and hill; sky and earth were blended into one.
This lasted for many days; and those were hard times.
The sparrows did not know at last if they were alive or dead; the crows crept into the pine-forest, silent with hunger and fear. The stag had not found a single tuft of grass for two days past and now leapt belling through the wood, tortured with starvation. The mice crept together in their parlours and froze; the chaffinch froze to death; the hare lay dead in the meadow; the fox ate the hare’s remains and was very thankful to do so.
And, when the weather subsided at last, things were not a whit better.
It was more piercingly cold than ever. The snow lay all around in huge drifts; and, where the snow had been blown away, the ground was hard as stone. Every single puddle was frozen to the bottom; the lake was frozen, the river was frozen; and the stag had to swallow snow to slake his thirst.
Want reigned on every side.