Текст адаптировала Лариса Курова

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Terribly cold it certainly was. The little Squirrels, who lived inside the tall fir-tree, kept 
rubbing each other's noses to keep themselves warm, and the Rabbits curled themselves up in 
their holes, and did not venture even to look out of doors. The only people who seemed to enjoy it 
were the great horned Owls. Their feathers were quite stiff with rime, but they did not mind, and 
they rolled their large yellow eyes, and called out to each other across the forest, 'Tu-whit! Tu-
whoo! Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! what delightful weather we are having!'
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On and on went the two Woodcutters, blowing lustily upon their fingers, and stamping with 
their huge iron-shod boots upon the caked snow. Once they sank into a deep drift, and came out 
as white as millers are, when the stones are grinding; and once they slipped on the hard smooth 
ice where the marsh-water was frozen, and their faggots fell out of their bundles, and they had to 
pick them up and bind them together again; and once they thought that they had lost their way, 
and a great terror seized on them, for they knew that the Snow is cruel to those who sleep in her 
arms. But they put their trust in the good Saint Martin, who watches over all travellers, and 
retraced their steps, and went warily, and at last they reached the outskirts of the forest, and saw, 
far down in the valley beneath them, the lights of the village in which they dwelt.
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So overjoyed were they at their deliverance that they laughed aloud, and the Earth 
seemed to them like a flower of silver, and the Moon like a flower of gold.
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Yet, after that they had laughed they became sad, for they remembered their poverty, 
and one of them said to the other, 'Why did we make merry, seeing that life is for the rich, and not 
for such as we are? Better that we had died of cold in the forest, or that some wild beast had 
fallen upon us and slain us.'
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'Truly,' answered his companion, 'much is given to some, and little is given to others. 
Injustice has parcelled out the world, nor is there equal division of aught save of sorrow.'
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But as they were bewailing their misery to each other this strange thing happened. There 
fell from heaven a very bright and beautiful star. It slipped down the side of the sky, passing by 
the other stars in its course, and, as they watched it wondering, it seemed to them to sink behind 
a clump of willow-trees that stood hard by a little sheepfold no more than a stone's-throw away.
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'Why! there is a crock of gold for whoever finds it,' they cried, and they set to and ran, so 
eager were they for the gold.
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And one of them ran faster than his mate, and outstripped him, and forced his way 
through the willows, and came out on the other side, and lo! there was indeed a thing of gold lying 
on the white snow. So he hastened towards it, and stooping down placed his hands upon it, and it 
was a cloak of golden tissue, curiously wrought with stars, and wrapped in many folds. And he 
cried out to his comrade that he had found the treasure that had fallen from the sky, and when his 
comrade had come up, they sat them down in the snow, and loosened the folds of the cloak that 

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