Quicksand

Excerpt from Book 1: The evening was a chill one in January. Blue shadows were lengthening on the snow ; and the bare twigs of trees, hazy blue, were deepening with mystery in the distance, glowing in faint purple on the hills and darkening into sadness in the mountains. The peaks stood out clear and sharp against the cold tints of the sky. Even the lowering sun could barely tinge them with rose light, so dimmed and whitened was he with his swirling halo of frost. His rays found more warmth in the valley, blushing on the surface of the snow and burning with the fierceness of flames in the village windows to westward. But even here, in thrifty, hard�working New Hampshire, there answered no human re�sponse to this bounty of warmth and of colour. Except for faint wreathings of smoke around the snow-muffled chimneys, the village might be one of the dead, as silent as the graveyard beyond it. The curving road rounded the frozen knoll. White houses, white as the snow, shrank close in their picket enclosures. There was no wind, the laughing of the river was congealed, birds and beasts alike were in hiding, men were within by their fires. The solitude was so absolute and holy that angels might walk unmolested, chanting the beauty of the earth and the majesty of oncoming night, with its limitless glory of stars.

• ISBN-13: 9781598389142
• 332 pages
• Paperback : 5 x 8 inches