He was so cold and numb that he almost
lost his hold around the branch; and he was dreadfully sleepy; but he
didn't dare fall asleep for fear of tumbling down.
My! but it was dismal to sit in that way the whole night through, out in
the forest! He never before understood the real meaning of "night." It
was just as if the whole world had become petrified, and never could
come to life again.
Then it commenced to dawn. The boy was glad that everything began to
look like itself once more; although the chill was even sharper than it
had been during the night.
Finally, when the sun got up, it wasn't yellow but red. The boy thought
it looked as though it were angry and he wondered what it was angry
about. Perhaps it was because the night had made it so cold and gloomy
on earth, while the sun was away.
The sunbeams came down in great clusters, to see what the night had been
up to. It could be seen how everything blushed--as if they all had
guilty consciences. The clouds in the skies; the satiny beech-limbs; the
little intertwined branches of the forest-canopy; the hoar-frost that
covered the foliage on the ground--everything grew flushed and red. More
and more sunbeams came bursting through space, and soon the night's
terrors were driven away, and such a marvellous lot of living things
came forward.
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