my son."

"Joy--joy, a little while, and I shall clasp my Fanchon in my arms!"

"Thy Fanchon, and the child--and the child."

The fire sent a trembling glow through the room of a hut on a Voshti
hill, and the smell of burning fir and camphire wood filtered through
the air with a sleepy sweetness. So delicate and faint between the
quilts lay the young mother, the little Fanchon, a shining wonder still
in her face, and the exquisite touch of birth on her--for when a child
is born the mother also is born again. So still she lay until one who
gave her into the world stooped, and drawing open the linen at her
breast, nestled a little life there, which presently gave a tiny cry,
the first since it came forth. Then Fanchon's arms drew up, and, with
eyes all tenderly burning, she clasped the babe to her breast, and as
silk breast touched silk cheek, there sprang up in her the delight and
knowledge that the doom of the White Omen was not for herself. Then
she called the child by its father's name, and said into the distance:
"Gustave, Gustave, come back!"

And the mother of Fanchon, remembering one night so many years before,
said, under her breath: "Michel, Michel, thou art gone so long!"

With their speaking, Gustave and the priest entered on them; and Fanchon
crying out for joy, said:

"Kiss thy child--thy little Gustave, my husband." Then, to the priest:

"Last night I saw the White Omen, mon pere; and one could not die, nor
let the child die, without a blessing. But we shall both live now."

The priest blessed all, and long time he talked with the wife of the
lost Michel. When he rose to go to bed she said to him: "The journey has
been too long, mon pere. Your face is pale and you tremble. Youth has no
patience. Gustave hurried you."

"Gustave yearned for thy Fanchon and the child. The White Omen made him
afraid."

"But the journey was too much. It is a hard, a bitter trail."

"I have come gladly as I went once with thy Michel. But, as thou sayest,
I am tired--at my heart. I will get to my rest."

Near dawn Gustave started from the bed where he sat watching, for he
saw the White Omen over against the shrine, and then a voice said, as it
were out of a great distance:

"Even me also, O my father!"

With awed footsteps, going to see, he found that a man had passed out
upon that trail by which no hunter from life can set a mark to guide a
comrade; leaving behind the bones and flesh which God set up, too heavy