"The night is very cold," he said; and he trembled. . . "I hear, O my
wife, I hear the voice of a little child . . . the voice is like thine,
Angelique."

And she, not knowing what to reply, said softly:

"There is hope in the voice of a child;" and the mother stirred within
her; and in the moment he knew also that the Spirits would give her the
child in safety, that she should not be alone in the long winter.

The sounds of the harsh night had ceased--the snapping of the leafless
branches, the cracking of the earth, and the heaving of the rocks: the
Spirits of the Frost had finished their work; and just as the grey
forehead of dawn appeared beyond the cold hills, Antoine cried out
gently: "Angelique . . . Ah, mon Capitaine . . . Jesu" . . .
and then, no more.

Night after night Angelique lighted candles in the place where Antoine
smiled on in his frozen silence; and masses were said for his soul--the
masses Love murmurs for its dead. The earth could not receive him; its
bosom was adamant; but no decay could touch him; and she dwelt alone with
this, that was her husband, until one beautiful, bitter day, when, with
no eye save God's to see her, and no human comfort by her, she gave birth
to a man-child. And yet that night she lighted the candles at the dead
man's head and feet, dragging herself thither in the cold; and in her
heart she said that the smile on Antoine's face was deeper than it had
been before.

In the early spring, when the earth painfully breathed away the frost