It was upon this sight, when the snow clouds had fled, that he had seen a scarlet sun come up; over the same scene he had watched it roll its golden chariot all day, and, tinging the same unbroken drifts, it had sunk scarlet again in the far southwest.

He had not been far from his house, and no one, in train, or sleigh, or on snow-shoes, had happened to come near it.
He would have gone himself to Turrifs for milk, for the pleasure of exchanging a word with his fellow-men, and for air and exercise, had it not been that he had hourly expected to see an engine, with its snow-plough, approaching on the rails.

Conversation by telegraph would have been a relief to him, but the wires seemed to have succumbed in more than one place to their weight of snow, and there was nothing for this young station-master to do but wait, and believe that communication would be re-established over the road and the wires sooner or later.

In the meantime he suffered no personal inconvenience, unless loneliness can be thus named, for he had abundance of food and fuel.

He watched the bright day wane and the sun of the old year set, and filled his stove with wood, and ate his supper, and told himself that he was a very fortunate fellow and much better off than a large proportion of men.
It is not always when we tell ourselves that we are well off that we are happiest: that self-addressed assertion often implies some tacit contradiction.
When darkness came he wondered if he should put on his snow-shoes and run over to Turrifs.