Then he cut off large splinters, until he had accumulated a great number, and after that he gathered smaller pieces of half-burned pine.
He was fully two hours doing this work, and the night advanced far, but he never faltered.

His head was bare, but he was protected from the wind by a fragment of the outhouse wall.

Every two or three minutes he stopped and listened for the sound of a creaking, sliding footstep on the snow, but, never hearing any, he always resumed his work with the same concentration.

All the while the wind rose and moaned through the ruins of the little village.

When Henry chanced to raise his head above the sheltering wall, it was like the slash of a knife across his cheek.
Finally he took half of the pine dust in his cap and a lot of the splinters under his arm, and stole back to the house from which the light had shone.