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ne; but the physical pain she now began to feel saved her. It called forth her energies; quickly she went to work to renew the fire, and the exertion drew her out of herself. As the flames blazed up and crackled through the dry branches, the life began to come back to her frozen limbs, and she roused herself to face her situation. Her baby must be buried, and she must perform the task. She fashioned a rough coffin out of some planks, and tenderly laid the tiny body in it. As she fastened down the lid it seemed to her that every nail went through her own heart, but she did not weep. Her eyes had long since ceased to know the comfort of tears. Wearily she climbed the hillside with her little burden, wondering within herself how much longer it would be before she could lay her worn-out limbs beside those three rude graves, and be done with suffering for ever. The baby must not lie alone; she would open Claude's grave, and lay him beside his father. The frozen ground was almost impenetrable, and it was long before she succeeded in digging a hole deep enough to admit the coffin. But patiently she toiled; slowly, with weak hands, hacking the soil, and scraping the lumps out of the grave. At last she had made a shallow opening which would hold the box, and when it was placed within she knelt beside it, holding the crucifix which had saved Claude from the waves, and prayed that their souls might rest in peace. A sudden impulse seized her. All that she had treasured, all that she had lived for, was in that grave. The crucifix was the last precious thing left to her, and she laid it upon the coffin of her child. Then, without trusting herself to kneel there longer, she rose hurriedly, cast back the frozen soil into the double grave, and piled large stones in a heap over the top, to prevent any animal scratching away the earth. Then she went back to her hut, and resumed the weary round of her hopeless, solitary life. To a modern mind it may seem strange that reason did not utterly desert her; but the age in which she lived may help to account for the strength which sustained her. Though of noble blood, and tenderly nurtured, she had been accustomed to view scenes of death and hardship with a calm eye. Young as she was, she had beheld death in many forms; and the sieges which her uncle's castle had several times resisted had taught her something of a man's strength and endurance, which, coupled with a woman's tenacious vitalit
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