“His name is Old Zero,” replied Jonas. “He is more than threescore years and ten, a great deal; his head is hoary, and his beard is long and gray. He creeps softly along after General Boreas has worked himself out of breath, and gone away. He curtains over all the windows with frost work in the night. He likes the night, when it is calm and still, and the stars are shining bright and cold all over the sky. And he kills more people than Boreas does.”
“Kills them?” said Rollo.
“Yes,” replied Jonas. “He makes no blustering, but he stings bitterly, and the poor traveller has his ears, and hands, and feet frozen before he knows what a cruel enemy is around him. Captain Jack Frost you may laugh at,—but as to Old Zero, you had better beware of him.”
Rollo laughed a good deal at Jonas’s account of the three Northmen, and Jonas told him that they sometimes made some splendid curiosities, which would be beautiful for a shelf in his museum, if they would only keep.
“What are the curiosities?” said Rollo.
“O, all kinds of stars, and spangles, and snow-flakes, of a great many beautiful forms,—and icicles, and frost work. But they will not keep very long, unless you make a cabinet expressly for them.”
“I can’t make a cabinet,” said Rollo.
“O, yes, you can,—a frost-cabinet,” said Jonas.
“How?” asked Rollo.