Ha, ha, ha, ha, howled the wind, then sinking to a sigh,
San-der-son—­San-der-son.

The cold had begun to strike into the marrow.  She moved as if her limbs were weighted.  There was a mist gathering before her eyes, and she put up her hand and tried to brush it away, but it remained.  She felt as if she were carrying something heavy in her arms and as she walked it grew heavier and heavier.  To her wandering mind it took a pitifully familiar shape.  Ah, yes!  She knew what it was now; it was the baby, and she must not let it get cold.  She must cover it with her cape and press it close to her bosom to keep it warm, but it was so far, so far, and it was getting heavier every moment.

And the wind continued to wail its dirge of “San-der-son, San-der-son.”  She went through the motion of covering up the baby’s head; she did not want it to waken and hear that awful cry.  She lifted up her empty arms and lowered her head to soothe the imaginary baby with a kiss, and was shocked to feel how cold its little cheek had grown.  She hurried on and on.  She would beg the Squire to let his wife take it in for just a minute, to warm it.  She would not ask to come in herself, but the baby—­no one would be so cruel as to refuse her that.  It would die out here in the cold and the storm.  It was so cruel, so hard to be wandering about on a night like this with the baby.  Her eyes began to fill with tears, and her lower lip to quiver, but she plodded on, sometimes gaining a few steps and then retracing them, but always with the same instinct that had spurred her on to efforts beyond her strength, and this done, she had no further concern for herself.  Her body especially, where the cape did not protect it against the blast, was freezing, shivering, aching all over.  A latent consciousness began to dawn as the dread presence of death drew nearer; some intuitive effort of preservation asserted itself, and she kept repeating over and over:  “I must not give up.  I must not give up.”

Presently the scene began to change, and the white formless world about her began to assume definite shape.  She had seen it all before, the bare trees pointing their naked branches upward, the fringe of willows, the smooth, glassy sheet of water that was partly frozen and partly undulating toward the southern shore.  The familiarity of it all began to haunt her.  Had she dreamed it—­was she dreaming now?  Perhaps it was only a dream after all!  Then, as if in a wave of clear thought, she remembered it all.  It was the lake, and she had been there with the Sunday school children last summer on their picnic.

It came to her like a solution of all her troubles; it was so placid, so still, so cold.  A moment and all would be forgotten.  She stood with one foot on the creaking ice.  It was but to walk a dozen steps to the place where the ice was but a crash of crystal and that would end it all.  She was so weary of the eternal strife of things, she was so glad to lay down the burden under which her back was bending to the point of breaking.