The star-child

Once upon a time two poor Woodcutters were making their way home through a great pine-forest. It was winter, and a night of bitter cold. The snow lay thick upon the ground, and upon the branches of the trees: the frost kept snapping the little twigs on either side of them, as they passed: and when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her. So cold was it that even the animals and the birds did not know what to make of it. `Ugh!- snarled the Wolf, as he limped through the brushwood with his tail between his legs, `this is perfectly monstrous weather. Why doesn-t the Government look to it?-