During the thaw, tree-trunks, branches, and fences had become wet.  The first snow which fell, being itself wet, had stuck to them.  But when all this froze together, and there was another overwhelming fall, outlines were formed over the frozen surface, such as one rarely sees the like of.  The weight of the first soft snow had caused it to slip down, but it had been arrested here and there by each inequality, and there it had collected, or else it had slid under the branches, or down on both sides of the fences; when this had been augmented both by drift and fall, the most whimsical animal forms were produced—­white cats, white hares clawed the tree-trunks with bent backs and heads and fore-quarters outstretched, or sat under the branches, or on the hedges.  White beasts were there, some appeared the size of martens, but occasionally they seemed as large as lynxes or even tigers; besides these there were numberless small animals, white mice, and squirrels, here, there, and everywhere.  Again there were, besides, all sorts of oddities, mountebanks who hung by their heels, clowns and goblins on the tops of the fences, dwarfs with big sacks on their backs; an old hat or a nightcap:  an animal without a head, another with a neck of preposterous length, an enormous mitten, an overturned water-can.  In some places the blackened foliage remained uncovered, and formed arabesques against the drifts; in others, masses of snow lay on the branches of the fir-trees with green above and beneath, forming wonderful contrasts of colour.  Aaroe drew up and they both got out of the sledge.

Now they gained a whole series of fresh impressions.  Right in front of them stood an old pine-tree, half prostrated in the struggle of life; but was he not dreaming, here in the winter, the loveliest of all dreams, that he was young again?  In the joyous growth of this snow-white glory he had forgotten all pain and decay, forgotten the moss on his bark, the rottenness of his roots was concealed.  A rickety gate had been taken from its place and was propped against the fence, broken and useless.  The artist hand of winter had sought it out too, and glorified it, and it was now an architectural masterpiece.  The slanting black gate-posts were a couple of young dandies, with hats on one side and jaunty air.  The old, grey, mossy rails—­one could not imagine Paradise within a more beautiful enclosure.  Their blemishes had in this resurrection become their greatest beauty.  Their knots and crannies were the chief building ground for the snow, each hole filled up by a donation of heavenly crystals from the clouds.  Their disfiguring splinters were now covered and kissed, shrouded and decorated; all blemishes were obliterated in the universal whiteness.  A tumbledown moss-grown hut by the roadside—­now more extravagantly adorned than the richest bride in the world, covered over from heaven’s own lap in such abundance that the white snow wreaths hung half a yard beyond the roof; in some places folded back with consummate art.  The grey-black wall under the snow wreaths looked like an old Persian fabric.  It seemed ready to appear in a Shakespearean drama.  The background of mountains and hills gleamed in the sunlight.