Explore "The Lake of Wine" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
For all the starkness of frost that now befell, it was not till the early days of February that the packed heavens began to discharge themselves of the congested stores of snow they had been long garnering. By then the ground was iron a foot deep; the last green thing was withered upon itself; dead birds hung in the hedgerows and rabbits were stuck stiff in their burrows. Familiar presentments of trees and buildings offered strange new aspects as seen from the middle of frozen ponds, and the very least sap of nature was so withdrawn as that it seemed a marvel the principle of life could endure, to hug itself with any promise of spring.
But to our gentleman waking one morning, there was earnest of the first white fall outside in the wan light struck rigidly from the ceiling. He rose and went to the window, and saw the cold sheet spread, pure and beautiful and hiding all his world; and at that he knew himself committed to such a prolonged hob-nobbing with his _lares_ as he had never before experienced.