It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town of
Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was
newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One
could look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white
emptiness, with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you could
see the silence--no, you could only hear it. The sidewalks were merely
long, deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here and there
you might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if you were
quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping
and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment
with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful
of snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not
linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing
itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for
snow-shovelers or anybody else to stay out long.

Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow in
fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, and
straight ahead, and everywhere. Under the impulse of one of these gusts,
great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; a
moment later another gust shifted them around the other way, driving a
fine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume
flakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as clean as
your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was play; but each and
all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, for that was
business.

Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor,
in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimson