though a man had
the right to choose his own way of death. And Marthe Perotti, the
hunchback wife of the shoemaker, looking by chance from her window,
caught his figure moving swiftly up the road. She had other thoughts,
for she knew and believed the old traditions of the witches and
snow-beings that steal the souls of men. She had even heard, 'twas said,
the dreaded "synagogue" pass roaring down the street at night, and now,
as then, she hid her eyes. "They've called to him ... and he must go,"
she murmured, making the sign of the cross.

But no one sought to stop him. Hibbert recalls only a single incident
until he found himself beyond the houses, searching for her along the
fringe of forest where the moonlight met the snow in a bewildering
frieze of fantastic shadows. And the incident was simply this--that he
remembered passing the church. Catching the outline of its tower against
the stars, he was aware of a faint sense of hesitation. A vague
uneasiness came and went--jarred unpleasantly across the flow of his
excited feelings, chilling exhilaration. He caught the instant's
discord, dismissed it, and--passed on. The seduction of the snow
smothered the hint before he realised that it had brushed the skirts of
warning.

And then he saw her. She stood there waiting in a little clear space of
shining snow, dressed all in white, part of the moonlight and the
glistening background, her slender figure just discernible.

"I waited, for I knew you would come," the silvery little voice of windy
beauty floated down to him. "You _had_ to come."

"I'm ready," he answered, "I knew it too."

The world of Nature caught him to its heart in those few words--the
wonder and the glory of the night and snow. Life leaped within him. The
passion of his pagan soul exulted, rose in joy, flowed out to her. He
neither reflected nor considered, but let himself go like the veriest
schoolboy in the wildness of first love.

"Give me your hand," he cried, "I'm coming ...!"

"A little farther on, a little higher," came her delicious answer. "Here
it is too near the village--and the church."

And the words seemed wholly right and natural; he did not dream of
questioning them; he understood that, with this little touch of
civilisation in sight, the familiarity he suggested was impossible. Once
out upon the open mountains, 'mid the freedom of huge slopes and
towering peaks, the stars and moon to witness and the wilderness of snow
to watch, th