The night was beautifully clear. A
peerless moon rode through an occasional fleecy cloud, and stars
twinkled from the sky and from every frost-covered tree in millions.
Your mind would wonder at the light that came glinting from ice, and
snow-wreath, and incrusted branches, as the eye followed for miles the
broad gleam of the Kennebec, that like a jewelled zone swept between the
mighty forests on its banks. And yet all was still. The cold seemed to
have frozen tree, and air, and water, and every living thing that moved.
Even the ringing of my skates on the ice echoed back from the Moccason
Hill with a startling clearness, and the crackle of the ice as I passed
over it in my course seemed to follow the tide of the river with
lightning speed.
I had gone up the river nearly two miles when, coming to a little stream
which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore its course. Fir
and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway
radiant with frost-work. All was dark within, but I was young and
fearless, and as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on
the borders of the stream, I laughed with very joyousness: my wild
hurrah rang through the silent woods, and I stood listening to the echo
that reverberated again and again, until all was hushed.
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