almanac. Indeed, it had been falling slowly and gently for two days; and
a white sheet of it, at least three inches deep, covered the ground on
the morning of the 5th. The weather had changed during the night, and
now the air was sharp and cold. Dark, bleak clouds hung along the
horizon in the northeast, the distant hills stood out sharp and cold,
and a chilling wind whispered and sighed through the leafless trees.
Then the wind grew stronger and stronger, the snow fell thicker and
faster, making fantastic figures in the air, then dancing and scudding
to the force of the gale, and shutting the opposite shore from sight.
Nyack lay buried in a storm, and the Tappan Zee was in a tempest. Snow
drifted through the streets, up the lanes, over the houses, and put
night-caps on the mountain tops. Snow danced into rifts in the roads and
across fields, and sent the traveller to the inn for shelter. Lowing
cattle sought the barn-yard for shelter, or huddled together under the
lee of some hay-stack, covered with snow. Night came, and still the snow
fell, and the wind blew in all its fury.

It was on that cold, stormy night that a bright light might have been
seen burning in the little house where Hanz Toodleburg lived. The storm
had shook its frame from early morning; and now the windows rattled,
discordant sounds were heard on the veranda, wind sighed through the
crevices, and fine snow rifted in under the door and through the
latch-hole, and tossed itself into little drifts on the floor. Nyack was
buried in a storm that night. There was an old clock on the
mantle-piece, and it kept on ticking, and its ticks could be heard above
the storm. And the bright oak fire in the great fireplace threw out
shadows that flitted over the great loom, and the wheels, and the
festoons of dried apples, and the pumpkins that hung from the beams
overhead. And old Deacon, the faithful watch-dog, lay coiled up on the
flag hearth-stone.