The world that lay beyond the threshold, sunk in moveless white repose, was of an immense serenity; but when Maria passed from the sheltering walls the cold smote her like the hungry blade of a sword and the forest leaped toward her in menace, its inscrutable face concealing a hundred dreadful secrets which called aloud to her in lamentable voices.  With a little moan she drew back, and closing the door sat shivering beside the stove.  Numbness was yielding, sorrow taking on an edge, and the hand that clutched her heart set itself to devising new agonies, each one subtler and more cruel than the last.

How he must have suffered, far off there amid the snows!  So thought she, as still her own face remembered the sting of the bitter air.  Men threatened by this fate had told her that death coming in such a guise smote with gentle and painless hand-a hand that merely lulled to sleep; but she could not make herself believe it, and all the sufferings that Francois, might have endured before giving up and falling to the white ground passed before her eyes.

No need for her to see the spot, too well she knew the winter terrors of the great forest, the snow heaped to the firs’ lower branches, alders almost buried beneath it, birches and aspens naked as skeletons and shuddering in the icy wind, a sunless sky above the massed and gloomy spires of green.  She sees Francois making his way through the close-set trees, limbs stiffened with the cold, his skin raw with that pitiless nor’wester, gnawed by hunger, stumbling with fatigue, his feet so weary that with no longer strength to lift them his snowshoes often catch the snow and throw him to his knees.

Doubtless when the storm abated he saw his error, knew that he was walking toward the barren northland, turned at once and took the right course—­he so experienced, the woods his home from boyhood.  But his food is nearly gone, the cold tortures him; with lowered head and clenched teeth he fights the implacable winter, calling to aid his every reserve of strength and high courage.  He thinks of the road he must follow, the miles to be overcome, measures his chances of life; and fitful memories arise of a house, so warm and snug, where all will greet him gladly; of Maria who, knowing what he has dared for her sake, will at length raise to him her truthful eyes shining with love.

Perhaps he fell for the last time when succour was near, a few yards only from house or shanty.  Often so it happens.  Cold and his ministers of death flung themselves upon him as their prey; they have stilled the strong limbs forever, covered his open handsome face with snow, closed the fearless eyes without gentleness or pity, changed his living body into a thing of ice ...  Maria has no more tears that she may shed, but she shivers and trembles as he must have trembled and shivered before he sank into merciful unconsciousness; horror and pity in her face, Maria draws nearer the stove as though she might thus bring him warmth and shield his dear life against the assassin.