He slept. It was a deep, cool sleep; a slumber beside a shadowed pool, with the wind whispering gently in strange tree tops, and water rippling softly in a strange stream.
CHAPTER VI
Sunshine followed storm. The winter sun was cresting the tree tops when Thoreau got out of his bed to build a fire in the big stove. It was nine o'clock, and bitterly cold. The frost lay thick upon the windows, with the sun staining it like the silver and gold of old cathedral glass, and as the fox breeder opened the cabin door to look at his thermometer he heard the snap and crack of that cold in the trees outside, and in the timbers of the log walls. He always looked at the thermometer before he built his fire—a fixed habit in him; he wanted to know, first of all, whether it had been a good night for his foxes, and whether it had been too cold for the furred creatures of the forest to travel. Fifty degrees below zero was bad for fisher and marten and lynx; on such nights they preferred the warmth of snug holes and deep windfalls to full stomachs, and his traps were usually empty. This morning it was forty-seven degrees below zero. Cold enough! He turned, closed the door, shivered. Then he stopped halfway to the stove, and stared.
Last night, or rather in that black part of the early day when they had gone to bed, Father Roland had warned him to make no noise in the morning; that they would let David sleep until noon; that he was sick, worn out, and needed rest. And there he stood now in the doorway of his room, even before the fire was started—looking five years younger than he looked last night, nodding cheerfully.
Thoreau grinned.
"Boo-jou, m'sieu," he said in his Cree-French. "My order was to make no noise and to let you sleep," and he nodded toward the Missioner's room.
"The sun woke me," said David. "Come here. I want you to see it!"
Thoreau went and stood beside him, and David pointed to the one window of his room, which faced the rising sun. The window was covered with frost, and the frost as they looked at it was like a golden fire.