A Little Norsk | Page 7

the hardships which
had been the lot of the sleeper. Her clothing was clean and finer than
one would expect to see.
Gearheart stood looking at her for a long time, the door still open, for
he felt re-enforced in some way by the sun. If any one had come
suddenly and closed the door on him and the white figure there, he
would have cried out and struggled like a madman to escape, such was
his unreasoning fear of the dead.
At length, with a long breath, he backed out and closed the door. Going
to the barn, he found a cow standing at an empty manger, and some
hens and pigs frozen in the hay. Looking about for some boards to
make a coffin, he came upon a long box in which a reaper had been
packed, and this he proceeded to nail together firmly, and to line with
pieces of an old stove-pipe at such places as he thought the mice would
try to enter.
When it was all prepared, he carried the box to the house and managed
to lay it down beside the bed; but he could not bring himself to touch
the body. He went out to see if some one were not coming. The sound
of a human voice would have relieved him at once, and he could have
gone on without hesitation. But there was no one in sight, and no one
was likely to be; so he returned, and summoning all his resolution, took
one of the quilts from the bed and placed it in the bottom of the box.
Then he removed the pillow from beneath the head of the dead woman
and placed that in the box. Then he paused, the cold moisture breaking
out on his face.

Like all young persons born far from war, and having no knowledge of
death even in its quiet forms, he had the most powerful organic
repugnance toward a corpse. He kept his eye on it as though it were a
sleeping horror, likely at a sudden sound to rise and walk. More than
this, there had always been something peculiarly sacred in the form of a
woman, and in his calmer moments the dead mother appealed to him
with irresistible power.
At last, with a sort of moan through his set teeth, he approached the bed
and threw the sheet over the figure, holding it as in a sling; then, by a
mighty effort, he swung it stiffly off the bed into the box.
He trembled so that he could hardly spread the remaining quilts over
the dead face. The box was wide enough to receive the stiff, curved
right arm, and he had nothing to do but to nail the cover on, which he
did in feverish haste. Then he rose, grasped his tools, rushed outside,
slammed the door, and set off in great speed across the snow, pushed
on by an indescribable horror.
As he neared home, his fresh young blood asserted itself more and
more; but when he entered the cabin he was still trembling, and
dropped into a chair like a man out of breath. At sight of the ruddy face
of Anson, and with the aid of the heat and light of the familiar little
room, he shook off part of his horror.
"Gi' me a cup o' coffee, Ans. I'm kind o' chilly an' tired."
Before drinking he wiped his face and washed his hands again and
again at the basin in the corner, as though there were something on
them which was ineffably unclean. The little one, who had been
weeping again, stared at him with two big tears drying on her hollow
cheeks.
"Well?" interrogated Anson.
"I nailed her up safe enough for the present. But what're we goin' to do
next?"

"I can't see 's we can do anythin' as long as such weather as this lasts. It
ain't safe f'r one of us to go out an' leave the other alone. Besides, it's
thirty below zero, an' no road, Moccasin's full of snow; an' another
wind likely to rise at any time. It's mighty tough on this little one, but it
can't be helped. As soon as it moderates a little, we'll try to find a
woman an' a preacher, an' bury that--relative."
"The only woman I know of is ol' Mrs. Cap Burdon, down on the Third
Moccasin, full fifteen miles away."
CHAPTER IV.
FLAXEN ADOPTS ANSON AS "PAP."
For nearly two weeks they waited, while the wind alternately raved and
whispered over them as it scurried the snow south or east, or shifted to
the south in the night, bringing "the north end of a south wind," the
most intolerable and cutting of winds. Day after day the restless snow
sifted