A STORM IN THE WOODS.
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.