Winters in Kentucky, he
said, were often cold enough to freeze the very marrow in one's bones,
when even the wildest of men would be glad enough to leave the woods and
hover over a big fire. But the settlers provided for this also by
building great stacks of firewood beside each house. They were as well
equipped with axes--keen, heavy weapons--as they were with rifles and
ammunition, and these were as necessary. The forest around Wareville
already gave great proof of their prowess with the ax.
Now the autumn was waning. Every morning the wilderness gleamed and
sparkled beneath a beautiful covering of white frost. The brown in the
leaves began to usurp the yellows and the reds. The air, crisp and cold,
had a strange nectar in it and its very breath was life. The sun lay in
the heavens a ball of gold, and a fine haze, like a misty golden veil,
hung over the forest. It was Indian summer.
Then Indian summer passed and winter, which was very early that year,
came roaring down on Wareville. The autumn broke up in a cold rain which
soon turned to snow. The wind swept out of the northwest, bitter and
chill, and the desolate forest, every bough stripped of its leaves,
moaned before the blast.
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