nine
o'clock
It was a deep , cool sleep ; a slumber beside a shadowed pool , with the wind whispering gently in strange tree tops , and water rippling softly in a strange stream . Sunshine followed storm . The winter sun was cresting the tree tops when Thoreau got out of his bed to build a fire in the big stove . It was nine o'clock , and bitterly cold . The frost lay thick upon the windows , with the sun staining it like the silver and gold of old cathedral glass , and as the fox breeder opened the cabin door to look at his thermometer he heard the snap and crack of that cold in the trees outside , and in the timbers of the log walls . He always looked at the thermometer before he built his fire -- a fixed habit in him ; he wanted to know , first of all , whether it had been a good night for his foxes , and whether it had been too cold for the furred creatures of the forest to travel . Fifty degrees below zero was bad for fisher and marten and lynx ; on such nights they preferred the warmth of snug holes and deep windfalls to full stomachs , and his traps were usually empty .