The Two-Bar Brand Chapter 9 Dried Rose-Leaves

On that night, snow was pouring itself down the narrow cañon in a
crowded whirl of dry, clean flakes. Wen Ho, watchful, for his master
was already a day or so beyond the promised date of his return, had
started a fire on the hearth and spread a single cover on the table.
He had drawn the green-and-gold curtains as though there had been
anything but whirling whiteness to look in and stood warming himself
with a rubbing of thin, dry hands before the open blaze. The real heat
of the house, and it was almost unbearably hot, came from the stoves
in kitchen and bedrooms, but this fire gave its quota of warmth and
more than its quota of that beauty so necessary to Prosper Gael.

Wen Ho put his head from one side to the other and stopped rubbing his
hands. He had heard the packing of snow under webs and runners. After
listening a moment, he nodded to himself, like a figure in a
pantomime, ran into the kitchen, did something to the stove, then
lighted a lantern and pattered out along the tunnel dodging the icicle
stalactites. Between the firs he stopped and held his lantern high so
that it touched a moving radius of flakes to silver stars. Back of him
through the open door streamed the glow of lamp and fire filling the
icicles with blood and flushing the walls and the roof of the cave.