it was
a voice. It arose from a soul. There was palpitation in the murmur.
Nevertheless, it seemed uttered almost unconsciously. It was an appeal
of suffering, not knowing that it suffered or that it appealed.

The cry--perhaps a first breath, perhaps a last sigh--was equally
distant from the rattle which closes life and the wail with which it
commences. It breathed, it was stifled, it wept, a gloomy supplication
from the depths of night. The child fixed his attention everywhere, far,
near, on high, below. There was no one. There was nothing. He listened.
The voice arose again. He perceived it distinctly. The sound somewhat
resembled the bleating of a lamb.

Then he was frightened, and thought of flight.

The groan again. This was the fourth time. It was strangely miserable
and plaintive. One felt that after that last effort, more mechanical
than voluntary, the cry would probably be extinguished. It was an
expiring exclamation, instinctively appealing to the amount of aid held
in suspense in space. It was some muttering of agony, addressed to a
possible Providence.

The child approached in the direction from whence the sound came.

Still he saw nothing.

He advanced again, watchfully.

The complaint continued. Inarticulate and confused as it was, it had
become clear--almost vibrating. The child was near the voice; but where
was it?

He was close to a complaint. The trembling of a cry passed by his side
into space. A human moan floated away into the darkness. This was what
he had met. Such at least was his impression, dim as the dense mist in
which he was lost.

Whilst he hesitated between an instinct which urged him to fly and an
instinct which commanded him to remain, he perceived in the snow at his
feet, a few steps before him, a sort of undulation of the dimensions of
a human body--a little eminence, low, long, and narrow, like the mould
over a grave--a sepulchre in a white churchyard.

At the same time the voice cried out. It was from beneath the undulation
that it proceeded. The child bent down, crouching before the undulation,
and with both his hands began to clear it away.

Beneath the snow which he removed a form grew under his hands; and
suddenly in the hollow he had made there appeared a pale face.

The cry had not proceeded from that face. Its eyes were shut, and the
mouth open but full of snow.

It remained motionless; it stirred not under the hands of the child. The
child, whose fingers wer