baker's horn, as he kept on shouting:

"Hot bread! Hot bread!"

High hung the moon and blinked the stars; and fine white shafts fell
through the air, upon everything around, like silver pollen.

"Maarten of the mountain!" whispered the children behind the window.
"Maarten the Freezyman!"[5]

[5] A legendary figure of a snow-covered bogie, who comes down to the
villages at Christmas-time and runs away with the children.

And they crept back into the kitchen, beside the fire.

And the black man stood outside the door, tugging at the string of his
twirling star, and sang through his nose:

Come, star, come, star, you must not so still stand!
You must go with me to Bethlehem Land,
To Bethlehem, that comely city,
Where Mary sits with her Babe on her knee....

Along the country-roads, the farmhouses stood snowed in, with black
window-shutters, which showed dark against the walls and shut in the
light, and stumpy chimneys, with thick smoke curling from them. Indoors,
there was no seeing clearly: the lamp hung from the ceiling in a ring of
steam and smoke and everything lay black and tumbled. In the hearth, the
yule-log lay blazing. The farmer's wife baked waffles and threw them in
batches on the straw-covered floor.