her with the accents of
despair and joy, which alternately blended therewith, were very
affecting.

Atlung rose and took up one child; it was the elder one. His wife rose
also, and gathered up the other in her arms. Several offered to carry
the boy for her; but she made no reply, only walked on with him,
consoling him, moaning over him, without a moment's pause between the
words, until she made a misstep and plunging forward fell prostrate on
the ground over her boy. She would not have help, but scrambled up with
the boy still in her arms, walked on, and fell again.

Then she cast a look up to heaven, as though she would ask how this
could happen, how it could be that this was possible!

Whenever I now recall her in her faith and in her helplessness, I
remember her thus, with the boy in front of her stretched out in the
snow, and she bending over him on her knees, tears streaming from the
eyes which were uplifted with a questioning gaze toward heaven.

Some one picked up the boy, and Stina helped his mother. But when the
little fellow found himself in the arms of another, he began to cry:
"Mamma, mamma!" and stretched forth his benumbed hands toward her. She
wanted to go to him at once and take him again in her arms, but he who
carried the child hastened onward, pretending not to hear her, although
she begged most humbly at last. They had scarcely come down on the
footpath before she hastened forward and stopped the man; then with many
loving words she took her boy again in her arms. Atlung was no longer in
sight.

I allowed them all to go on in advance of me.

But when I saw them a short distance from me, enveloped in snow between
the trees and heard the weeping and the soothing words, I drifted back
into my old thoughts.

These two poor little boys had accepted literally the words of the grown
people--to the utter dismay of the latter! If we were right in our
conjectures (for the boys themselves had not yet told us anything and
would not be likely to tell anything until after the illness they must
unquestionably pass through); but _if_ we were right in our conjectures,
then these two little ones had sought a reality far greater than ours.

They had believed in beings more loving than those about us, in a life
warmer and richer than our own; because of this belief they had braved
the cold, although amid tears and terror, waiting resolutely for the
miracle. When the thunder rolled over them, they had doubtless