The leaves had already fallen, and lay in a dense, damp carpet throughout the forest; the song birds had gone, and the woods seemed utterly quiet.

When a red squirrel "chickered" at a distance, or when a partridge whirred up, the sound fell startlingly loud on the air.
There was, indeed, something almost ominous in the stillness of the morning.

As we entered the spruce woods beyond the bushy clearing of the Old Slave's Farm, Addison cast his eye southward, and remarked that there was a "snow bank" rising in the sky.

Turning, we saw a long, leaden, indeterminate cloud.

It was then about nine o'clock in the morning.
By ten o'clock the cloud had hidden the sun, and by noon the entire sky had grown dark.