ue?"

"Wings--wings," she falteringly said: "it is the hot blast through the
chimney; the night is cold, Antoine."

"The night is very cold," he said; and he trembled... "I hear, O my
wife, I hear the voice of a little child... the voice is like thine,
Angelique."

And she, not knowing what to reply, said softly:

"There is hope in the voice of a child;" and the mother stirred within
her; and in the moment he knew also that the Spirits would give her the
child in safety, that she should not be alone in the long winter.

The sounds of the harsh night had ceased--the snapping of the leafless
branches, the cracking of the earth, and the heaving of the rocks:
the Spirits of the Frost had finished their work; and just as the grey
forehead of dawn appeared beyond the cold hills, Antoine cried out
gently: "Angelique... Ah, mon Capitaine... Jesu"... and then, no more.

Night after night Angelique lighted candles in the place where Antoine
smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul--the
masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its
bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone
with this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when,
with no eye save God's to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave
birth to a man-child. And yet that night she lighted the candles at the
dead man's head and feet, dragging herself thither in the cold; and in
her heart she said that the smile on Antoine's face was deeper than it
had been before.

In the early spring, when the earth painfully breathed away the frost
that choked it, with her child for mourner, and herself for sexton and
priest, she buried Antoine with maimed rites: but hers were the prayers
of the poor, and of the pure in heart; and she did not fret because,
in the hour that her comrade was put away into the dark, the world was
laughing at the thought of coming summer.

Before another sunrise, the owners of the island of St. Jean claimed
what was theirs; and because that which had happened worked upon their
hearts, they called the child St. Jean, and from that time forth they
made him to enjoy the goodly fruits of the Rose Tree Mine.

THE CIPHER

Hilton was staying his horse by a spring at Guidon Hill when he first
saw her. She was gathering may-apples; her apron was full of them. He
noticed that she did not stir until he rode almost upon her. Then she
started, first without