The hedgehog had shrunk until there was room for two in the hole which was once too small for him. The crows fought like mad, if they found as much as an old shrivelled berry forgotten in the bushes. The fox skulked about with an empty stomach and evil eyes. But the little brown mice discovered with dismay that they were nearly come to the bottom of their store-room, for they had eaten very hard to keep warm in the bad days.
The Prince of Winter stood in the valley and looked upon all this with content. He went into the forest, where the snow was frozen to windward right up to the tops of the smooth beech-trunks; but on the boughs of the fir-trees it lay so thick that they were weighed right down to the ground.
“You may be Summer’s servants,” he said, scornfully, “but still you have to resign yourselves to wearing my livery. And now the sun shall shine on you; and I will have a glorious day after my own heart.”
He bade the sun come out; and he came.
He rode over a bright blue sky; and all that was still alive in the valley raised itself towards him and looked to him for warmth. There was a yearning and a sighing deep in the ground and deep in the forest and deep in the river:
“Call Spring back to the valley! Give us Summer again! We are yearning! We are yearning!”
But the sun had but a cold smile in answer to their prayers. He gleamed upon the hoar-frost, but could not melt it; he stared down at the snow, but could not thaw it.
The valley lay dead and silent under its white winding-sheet. Scarcely even the crows screamed in the forest.
“That’s how I like to see the land,” said Winter.
And the day came to an end, a short, sorry day, swallowed up helplessly in the great, stern night, in which a thousand stars shone cold over the earth. The snow creaked under the tread of the stag; the sparrow chirped with hunger in his sleep. The ice thundered and split into huge cracks.