from the PROBE on a Wednesday morning,
one's breath was cut clean off, and the tears raced down one's cheeks.
When the wind dropped, there were hard black frosts--a deadly, stagnant
kind of cold, which seemed to penetrate every pore of the skin and
every cranny of the house. Then came the snow, which fell for three
days and nights on end, and for several nights after, so that the town
was lost under a white pall: house-entrances were with difficulty kept
free, and the swept streets were banked with walls of snow, four and
five feet high. The night-frosts redoubled their keenness; the snow
underfoot crackled like electric sparks; the sleighs crunched the
roads. But except for this, and for the tinkling of the sleigh-bells,
the streets were as noiseless as though laid with straw, and especially
while fresh snow still formed a soft coating on the crisp layer below.
All dripping water hung as icicles; water froze in ewers and pitchers;
milk froze in cans and jugs; and this though the great stoves in the
dwelling-rooms were heated to bursting-point. Red-nosed, red-eared men,
on whose beards and moustaches the breath had turned to ice-drops,
cried to one another at street-corners that such a winter had not been
known for thirty years; and, as they spoke, they stamped their feet,
and clapped their hands, to keep the chilly blood agoing. Women muffled
and veiled themselves like Orientals, hardly showing the tips of their
noses; and all manner of strange, antiquated fur-garments saw the day.
At night, if one opened a window, and peered out at the houses
crouching beneath their thick white load, and at the deserted,
snow-bound streets, over which the street-lamps threw a pale, uncertain
light--at night, familiar things took on an unfamiliar aspect, and the
well-known streets might have been the untrodden ways that led to a new
world.

Early in November, all ponds and pools were bearing, and forthwith many
hundreds of people forgot the severity of the weather, and thronged out
with their skates.

Maurice was among the first. He was a passionate skater; and it was the
one form of sport in which he excelled. As four o'clock came round, he
could contain himself no longer; he would rather have gone without his
dinner, than have missed, on the JOHANNATEICH, the two hours that
elapsed before the sweepers, crying: "FEIERABEND!" drove the skaters
before them, with their brooms. In a tightly buttoned square jacket,
the collar of which w