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