u not tell me what gives the ache to your words?"

"I see in the Valley--snow... snow."

"It's a laugh you have at me in your cheek, whin I'd give years of my
ill-spent life to watch the chimney smoke come curlin' up slow through
the sharp air in the Valley there below."

"There is no chimney and there is no smoke in all the Valley."

"Before God, if you're a man, you'll put your hand on my arm and tell me
what trouble quakes your speech."

"Shon McGann, it is for you to make the sign of the Cross... there,
while I put my hand on your shoulder--so!"

"Your hand is heavy, Pierre."

"This is the sight of the eyes that see. In the Valley there is snow; in
the snow of all that was, there is one poppet-head of the mine that
was called St. Gabriel... upon the poppet-head there is the figure of a
woman."

"Ah!"

"She does not move--"

"She will never move?"

"She will never move."

"The breath o' my body hurts me.... There is death in the Valley,
Pierre?"

"There is death."

"It was an avalanche--that path between the pines?"

"And a great storm after."

"Blessed be God that I cannot behold that thing this day!... And the
woman, Pierre, the woman aloft?"

"She went to watch for someone coming, and as she watched, the avalanche
came--and she moves not."

"Do we know that woman?"

"Who can tell?"

"What was it you whispered soft to yourself, then, Pierre?"

"I whispered no word."

"There, don't you hear it, soft and sighin'?... Nathalie!"

"'Mon Dieu!' It is not of the world."

"It's facin' the poppet-head where she stands I'd be."

"Your face is turned towards her."

"Where is the sun?"

"The sun stands still above her head."

"With the bitter over, and the avil past, come rest for her and all that
lie there."

"Eh, 'bien,' the game is done!"

"If we stay here we shall die also."

"If we go we die, perhaps."...

"Don't spake it. We will go, and we will return when the breath of
summer comes from the South."

"It shall be so."

"Hush! Did you not hear--?"

"I did not hear. I only see an eagle, and it flies towards Whiteface
Mountain."

And Shon McGann and Pretty Pierre turned back from the end of their
quest--from a mighty grave behind to a lonely waste before; and though
one was snow-blind, and the other knew that on him fell the chiefer
weight of a great misfortune, for he must provide food and fire and be
as a mother to his comrade--they had courage; without which, men are