That night a light rain fell, then turned to a busy snow-storm, which fell for hours on the wet surfaces in thick soft-falling flakes, so that by the next morning the world was a fairy forest of white. The trees bent down under their feathery load. Wonderful low intricately crossed branches were everywhere. Each littlest grove and clump of shrubbery became a dense thicket of white. This fairy forest was close, close round us, so that each street seemed magical and unfamiliar, a place that we had never seen before. It was a perfectly hushed world. Our footsteps made no sound, and even the masses from the overladen branches came down silently. Everything but whiteness was obliterated; then at night the moon came out clear again, and lighted up this fairy world, and the white spirits of trees stood up against the gray-black sky.
Ten days after this there followed a great ice-storm, when for two days rain fell incessantly, and, as it fell, covered the twigs and branches with crystal. It cleared on the third morning, and instead of white, we were in a world of diamond. The dazzling brilliancy was almost more than the eye could bear. Every blade of grass and seed-vessel was changed to a crystal jewel, and the breeze set them tinkling. The sky was fairy blue. The woods and all the fields flashed round us as we walked almost spell-bound through their strange beauty. The wonder was that the whole star-like world did not clash and ring as if with silver harp music.
As the sun rose higher, the country was veiled with frost haze, but through it, and beyond, we saw the shining of the crust on all the distant hills.
CHAPTER XV—ASSIMASQUA, AND MARSTON
Assimasqua Mountain rises abruptly to the west of the four ponds, a noble hill or range, five miles in length.
The west shore of the Assimasqua lakes sweeps abruptly up to the high crest of the ridge, which is very irregular. It is partly wooded, partly half-grown-up pasture, partly ledge, and along the high grassy summit small chasms open and lead away into deep woods of hemlock. The steep east side is covered for most of its length with an amazing growth of juniper, hundreds and hundreds of close-massed bushes of great size and thickness. The ridge holds a number of little dark mountain tarns, and half a dozen good brooks tumble down its sides in small cascades. The folds of its forest skirts broaden out to the west into the bottom lands at its feet. To the east, the valleys of the brooks deepen and sharpen into ravines through the woods, as they draw near the lakes.
The shores all about the four lakes, as I said, are heavily wooded, and there are but one or two farms, and these only small clearings. A singular person lived in one of them, who worked for years over a great invention, a boat which was to utilize the wind by means of a windmill, which in turn worked a small paddle-wheel. No one now knows whether he had never heard of such a thing as a sail, or merely thought sails dangerous. He was absorbed in his project; and he did get his boat to go, in time, and at least a few times she trundled a clumsy course around the lake.
Near the south end of the Mountain is the old Hale place. Mr. Hale was a gentle-looking man, very neat, with a quiet voice and ways. He kept his wide fields finely cultivated, and had a large orchard, and twelve Jersey cows. The lane through which they filed home at night is enclosed between the two mightiest stump fences I have ever seen, fully ten feet high, and a perfect wilderness to climb over. They look like the brandished arms of witches, or like enormous antlers, against the sky, and are thickly fringed all along their base with delicate Dicksonia fern. Stump fences are fast becoming rare with us, and these must be the over-turned stumps of first-growth pine.