In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night there were even seven degrees of frost.

There was such a frozen surface on the snow that they drove the wagons anywhere off the roads.

Easter came in the snow.

Then all of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm, driving rain fell in streams.

On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though hiding the mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature.