His brilliant imagination at once painted a picture in which every detail was vivid and full of life, and this picture was of a vast forest, trees and bushes alike clothed in ice, and in the center of it a slender figure, but straight, tall and strong, Tayoga himself speeding on like the arrow from the bow, never wavering, never weary.

Then his mind allowed the picture to fade.

Wilton might not believe Tayoga could succeed, but how could this young Quaker know Tayoga as he knew him?
The clouds, having finished their mobilization in the center of the heavens, soon spread to the horizon on every side.

Then a single great white flake dropped slowly and gracefully from the zenith, fell within the palisade, and melted before the eyes of Robert and Wilton.

But it was merely a herald of its fellows which, descending at first like skirmishers, soon thickened into companies, regiments, brigades, divisions and armies.