I thought long upon the matter of Hazen Kinch before sleep came that night.

Toward morning the snow must have stopped; and the wind increased and carved the drifts till sunrise, then abruptly died.  I met Hazen at the postoffice at ten and he said:  “I’m starting home.”

I asked:  “Can you get through?”

He laughed.

“I will get through,” he told me.

“You’re in haste.”

“I want to see that boy of mine,” said Hazen Kinch.  “A fine boy, man!  A fine boy!”

“I’m ready,” I said.

When we took the road the mare was limping.  But she seemed to work out the stiffness in her knees and after a mile or so of the hard going she was moving smoothly enough.  We made good time.

The day, as often happens after a storm, was full of blinding sunlight.  The glare of the sun upon the snow was almost unbearable.  I kept my eyes all but closed but there was so much beauty abroad in the land that I could not bear to close them altogether.  The snow clung to twigs and to fences and to wires, and a thousand flames glinted from every crystal when the sun struck down upon the drifts.  The pine wood upon the eastern slope of Rayborn Hill was a checkerboard of rich colour.  Green and blue and black and white, indescribably brilliant.  When we crossed the bridge at the foot of the hill we could hear the brook playing beneath the ice that sheathed it.  On the white pages of the snow wild things had writ here and there the fine-traced tale of their morning’s adventuring.  We saw once where a fox had pinned a big snowshoe rabbit in a drift.

Hazen talked much of that child of his on the homeward way.  I said little.  From the top of the Rayborn Hill we sighted his house and he laid the whip along the mare and we went down that last long descent at a speed that left me breathless.  I shut my eyes and huddled low in the robes for protection against the bitter wind, and I did not open them again till we turned into Hazen’s barnyard, ploughing through the unpacked snow.

When we stopped Hazen laughed.

“Ha!” he said.  “Now, come in, man, and warm yourself and see the baby!  A fine boy!”

He was ahead of me at the door; I went in upon his heels.  We came into the kitchen together.

Hazen’s kitchen was also living-room and bedroom in the cold of winter.  The arrangement saved firewood.  There was a bed against the wall opposite the door.  As we came in a woman got up stiffly from this bed and I saw that this woman was Hazen’s wife.  But there was a change in her.  She was bleak as cold iron and she was somehow strong.

Hazen rasped at this woman impatiently:  “Well, I’m home!  Where is the boy?”

She looked at him and her lips moved soundlessly.  She closed them, opened them again.  This time she was able to speak.

“The boy?” she said to Hazen.  “The boy is dead!”

The dim-lit kitchen was very quiet for a little time.  I felt myself breathe deeply, almost with relief.  The thing for which I had waited—­it had come.  And I looked at Hazen Kinch.