And Lina wandered off, deep, deep
into the woods her head aching with overcharged
thought, her heart lying wounded and cold in her bosom.
Hour after hour she toiled on, wild with the pain
of her new sorrow. It seemed to her that intense
action could only bring rest. Thus, she clambered
hill after hill, drew herself up the steep face of
many a rock that, at another time, would have defied
her efforts, and waded, knee-deep, in drifts of dead
leaves that choked up the hollows. Sometimes
she would stop suddenly, out of breath, and panting
with the fatigue of her aimless exertions. But
after looking wildly about, as if in fear of pursuit,
she would dart off again, perhaps retreading the rough
path she had left. At last, she sat down, exhausted,
at the foot of a tree, and looked around in bitter
despair as she saw the woods darken overhead, and
felt a soft storm of snow flakes floating dreamily
over her.
The poor child was numb and cold.
Her very breath seemed turning to ice upon her lips.
But for the little hound that crept up to her bosom,
and lay patiently there, with its slender head laid
upon her shoulder, and its limbs trembling with the
cold, she would have perished. But the warmth
from this little animal’s body kept the vitality
in her poor heart, and instead of death, a drowsiness
fell upon her, which would perhaps have ended in a
wakeless sleep. But just as she was sinking away
into that deathly torpor from which few are aroused,
a female figure came, floating like a dark bird of
prey, through the storm, now obscured by the thick
interlacing of naked branches, and again dimmed in
her approach by the veil of virgin snow-flakes that
filled the air.
The hound lifted its slender head,
gave a faint whine and lay down again motionless,
but with his vigilant eyes on the shadowy figure that
approached. That pale face was evidently known
to the dog, or he would not have rested there so peacefully,
though it moved through the falling snow, like a phantom
which might disappear with the slightest sound.
Close to the prostrate girl it came that
sinister, white face and the figure stooped
from under the folds of its black and ample cloak,
to whisper in the cold ear of Lina French.
“Go to the house upon the hill-side.
There your mother is waiting for you.”
Lina struggled like one aroused from
the thrall of a nightmare. The word mother had
broken up the ice at her heart. She pushed the
hound from her bosom, and staggering to her feet,
looked to the right and left. No one was near.
The pale quiver of the snow flakes, and the naked
tree boughs, trembling and sighing together, was all
that she could make out. But the word mother
still sounded in her ear, and the sentence uttered
to her sleep grew trumpet-toned, and seemed wailed
back to her by the storm.
“‘The house upon the hill-side!’
where is it?” she cried. “Which way
shall I go? Answer me, thou voice of the storm!
is it north or south, to the right or left? Answer
me or if I am indeed mad, be silent and
let me die!”
Then, through the drifting snow flakes
that settled down heavier and heavier, there came
a voice clear and musical, like the low tones of a
flute, half-singing, half-speaking, which might have
been the disguise of some voice that feared detection.
“To the southward to
the southward, where a hearth gives forth its white
smoke, and your mother awaits her child.”
Then, with a wild laugh, ending in
sobs that wasted themselves on the silence, Lina sprang
away southward, always with the storm beating in her
face, and the snow weltering like a shroud around her
feet.
Sometimes she would pause in a rift
of the hills and look wistfully upon the bed of sere
leaves and feathery snow, tempting her to sink down
and die, with the grim hemlock boughs, plumed with
snow wreaths drooping over her, and lulled by the
gurgle of unseen waters wandering to the river, under
their jewelled network of ice, but she resisted the
impulse, and still bent her way to the south, while
the little dog, so delicate and yet so faithful, rushed
after her without a whine, as if he knew, gentle creature,
that a cry of pain, added to her own sorrow, would
be enough to smite away all her insane strength and
leave her prostrate upon the white earth.
At last she came out of the woods
upon a hill-side covered with the tangled undergrowth
that follows a fire upon the hills. The trunk
of an old cedar tree, blackened and charred to the
roots, warned her of a close approach to the river,
and in the distance she saw a wreath of dim smoke
curling up through the snow. Leaving the cedar-tree
on her right, Lina toiled up the hill, and crossed
a ravine darkened with great white pines and spruce
trees. At the bottom, a mountain stream broke
through ten thousand fairy chains of ice, and melting
the pearly foam of the snow as it fell, sent it leaping
downward in a torrent that seemed half diamonds, half
pearl drifts, under which the pure waters went singing
softly on their way to the river.
Lina did not heed the gentle warning
of the waters, but sprang forward in wild haste.
Her step shattered the glittering ice right and left,
and the cold water gushed over her feet and garments,
but she moved on without pause, climbing up the banks
of the stream till a smooth platform of snow, and
a house whose windows were fitfully revealed by pale
gleams of light, evidently from a half buried fire,
stood before her.
She drew near to the house, standing
there in the darkness, and began to stagger, for now
the unnatural strength which had nerved her, gave way.
The icy waters of the brook froze into fetters, around
her ankles, and she fell, without a sigh or moan,
with her face toward the earth.
The poor little hound, after pulling
at her garments with piteous whines, set up a howl
that rang mournfully over the snow waste around.
Lina did not move. She was sensible, but utterly
strengthless. All that she had suffered was lost
in a single desire to be still, and sleep or die.
The howl of her poor, shivering companion,
so sharp and plaintive in reality came to her ear
as if from a great distance, and for once she struggled
to call Fair-Star by name, and tell him where she was,
but her lips gave forth no sound, and when the dog
set up another cry, Lina did not hear it.