and
touched his head gently.

"What did you do so long?"

"I made lace."

"What is lace?"

"It is like that a little," and she pointed to a cobweb stretching from
a dead twig to a weed. Hansei looked and slowly put his foot through it.

"Must you go tomorrow and next day?" he asked.

"Next day and always," said the mother, looking off down the yellow
road.

Hansei cried: "Let me go too; let me go!"

"Hush, no; it is dark where I go."

"Is there no sun at the other side of the hill?"

"Yes, yes; but we who make lace sit in darkness."

Hansei asked: "Why must there be lace?"

The mother stared into the dusk. "Because," she said slowly, "there are
princesses and great ladies down there who must be beautiful."

"What is beautiful?"

"I don't know."

Always through the dusky summer evenings they sat together on the
doorstep, the mother with her bent head resting on her hand, and Hansei
staring up at the great sky and clouds and stars above him. Sometimes
the mother told strange stories, but oftener they sat silent.

When winter came it seemed to Hansei that half of all the joy and light
and life went out of the world. There were no birds nor bugs nor bees
left; the flowers were gone, and the days were short and gray. It was
cold, and he could only stay in the dim little house, playing with small
sticks and stones, or tracing the frostwork on the one little window.
Frost was like lace, his mother had told him.

Sometimes, too, he would try to sing as the woman had sung who passed
that summer time.

One evening in the middle of winter Hansei and his mother started out to
a bit of woods skirting the other side of the yellow road. Hansei sang
as they went; it was half what the woman had sung and half like nothing
that was ever heard. Sometimes this tune made his mother smile a little,
but oftener she did not hear it.

As they crossed the yellow road his mother stopped and looked, as she
always did.

"Hark!" she said, hushing the singing with her hand. Hansei stood still
and listened. Yes, yes, they were coming--"the others." It sounded again
as it had the day the men had ridden by, only more--more; and they were
coming nearer. There were voices and the beat of footsteps, and
sometimes Hansei heard a strange sound that might be singing or wind
moaning.

Hansei said: "I am so afraid." But his mother did not hear him. He hid
his face in her gown and waited. They were coming on and on; and they
were sa