CHAPTER VII
A FROSTY MORNING IN FLORIDA
It was out of a moonless night that the frost
came—a night whose sky was velvety black
and seemed to hold no stars. Instead they had
slipped moorings and on slender cables, I do not
know how many thousand million miles long,
were swung down toward the earth, quivering
with friendly yellow fires as if to warm as well
as light it. In a Northern December night the
stars are diamond dust, splintered in keen glints
from a matrix of black onyx. Their shine is that
of scintillant spears of electricity. Here they
are radiant golden globes swung just above the
treetops. The wind out of the north was hushed
and in the stillness the frost sprites that had
soared gleefully upon it far beyond their usual
habitat fell to earth, motionless. They were very
young and adventurous frost sprites, and the
sudden dawn found only their feathery white
garments resting on exposed surfaces; the
sprites themselves had already evaporated into
invisible mists in terror of the coming fervid sun.
The first rays of the sun licked up these gray,
