and to him who walks over ice both arms are a natural and necessary
balancing power.

He was obliged to do without this balance.

He did without it and advanced, bending under his burden, not knowing
what would become of him.

This little infant was the drop causing the cup of distress to overflow.

He advanced, reeling at every step, as if on a spring board, and
accomplishing, without spectators, miracles of equilibrium. Let us
repeat that he was, perhaps, followed on this path of pain by eyes
unsleeping in the distances of the shadows--the eyes of the mother and
the eyes of God. He staggered, slipped, recovered himself, took care of
the infant, and, gathering the jacket about her, he covered up her head;
staggered again, advanced, slipped, then drew himself up. The cowardly
wind drove against him. Apparently, he made much more way than was
necessary. He was, to all appearance, on the plains where Bincleaves
Farm was afterwards established, between what are now called Spring
Gardens and the Parsonage House. Homesteads and cottages occupy the
place of waste lands. Sometimes less than a century separates a steppe
from a city.

Suddenly, a lull having occurred in the icy blast which was blinding
him, he perceived, at a short distance in front of him, a cluster of
gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow. The reverse of a
silhouette--a city painted in white on a black horizon, something like
what we call nowadays a negative proof. Roofs--dwellings--shelter! He
had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the ineffable encouragement of