These young buds, stewed, seemed to posess an encouraging nutrition.

Elijah took heart of hope, though he was cast down again when Daylight failed to find another clump of willows.
The sap was rising in the trees, and daily the trickle of unseen streamlets became louder as the frozen land came back to life.

But the river held in its bonds of frost.

Winter had been long months in riveting them, and not in a day were they to be broken, not even by the thunderbolt of spring.

May came, and stray last-year's mosquitoes, full-grown but harmless, crawled out of rock crevices and rotten logs.
Crickets began to chirp, and more geese and ducks flew overhead.