Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/106

 CHAPTER VII

A FROSTY MORNING IN FLORIDA

It was out of a moonless night that the frost came—a night whose sky was velvety black and seemed to hold no stars. Instead they had slipped moorings and on slender cables, I do not know how many thousand million miles long, were swung down toward the earth, quivering with friendly yellow fires as if to warm as well as light it. In a Northern December night the stars are diamond dust, splintered in keen glints from a matrix of black onyx. Their shine is that of scintillant spears of electricity. Here they are radiant golden globes swung just above the treetops. The wind out of the north was hushed and in the stillness the frost sprites that had soared gleefully upon it far beyond their usual habitat fell to earth, motionless. They were very young and adventurous frost sprites, and the sudden dawn found only their feathery white garments resting on exposed surfaces; the sprites themselves had already evaporated into invisible mists in terror of the coming fervid sun.

The first rays of the sun licked up these gray,