It seemed to harmonise with him. She felt very happy,
with an overflow of joy in the scene through which they were driving
and which continually increased in beauty.

On one side of the road were the mountains, the white mountains, which
took a warm tint from the sunlight. In front of the mountains were
lower hills, partly covered by woods, and among these lay scattered
farms. The farms were soon passed and then came woods, nothing but
woods. On the other side of the road they had the sea for the whole
way, but between them and it were flat expanses, probably marshes. The
sea looked steel-grey against the snow. It spoke of another part of
life, of eternal unrest; protest after protest against the snow idyl.

During the thaw, tree-trunks, branches, and fences had become wet. The
first snow which fell, being itself wet, had stuck to them. But when
all this froze together, and there was another overwhelming fall,
outlines were formed over the frozen surface, such as one rarely sees
the like of. The weight of the first soft snow had caused it to slip
down, but it had been arrested here and there by each inequality, and
there it had collected, or else it had slid under the branches, or
down on both sides of the fences; when this had been augmented both by
drift and fall, the most whimsical animal forms were produced--white
cats, white hares clawed the tree-trunks with bent backs and heads
and fore-quarters outstretched, or sat under the branches, or on the
hedges. White beasts were there, some appeared the size of martens,
but occasionally they seemed as large as lynxes or even tigers;
besides these there were numberless small animals, white mice, and
squirrels, here, there, and everywhere. Again there were, besides, all
sorts of oddities, mountebanks who hung by their heels, clowns and
goblins on the tops of the fences, dwarfs with big sacks on their
backs; an old hat or a nightcap: an animal without a head, another
with a neck of preposterous length, an enormous mitten, an overturned
water-can. In some places the blackened foliage remained uncovered,
and formed arabesques against the drifts; in others, masses of snow
lay on the branches of the fir-trees with green above and beneath,
forming wonderful contrasts of colour. Aaroe drew up and they both got
out of the sledge.

Now they gained a whole series of fresh impressions. Right in front of
them stood an old pine-tree, half prostrated in the struggle of life;
but was