.
In that moment the mother's love pleaded for painful consciousness
rather than oblivion--pleaded to be left in aching weariness, rather
than to have the encircling arms benumbed so that they could not feel
the dear burden. In another moment Molly had flung something away, but
it was not the black remnant--it was an empty phial. And she walked on
again under the breaking cloud, from which there came now and then the
light of a quickly veiled star, for a freezing wind had sprung up since
the snowing had ceased. But she walked always more and more drowsily,
and clutched more and more automatically the sleeping child at her
bosom.

Slowly the demon was working his will, and cold and weariness were his
helpers. Soon she felt nothing but a supreme immediate longing that
curtained off all futurity--the longing to lie down and sleep. She had
arrived at a spot where her footsteps were no longer checked by a
hedgerow, and she had wandered vaguely, unable to distinguish any
objects, notwithstanding the wide whiteness around her, and the growing
starlight. She sank down against a straggling furze bush, an easy
pillow enough; and the bed of snow, too, was soft. She did not feel
that the bed was cold, and did not heed whether the child would wake
and cry for her. But her arms had not yet relaxed their instinctive
clutch; and the little one slumbered on as gently as if it had been
rocked in a lace-trimmed cradle.

But the complete torpor came at last: the fingers lost their tension,
the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the
blue eyes opened wide on the cold starlight. At first there was a
little peevish cry of "mammy", and an effort to regain the pillowing
arm and bosom; but mammy's ear was deaf, and the pillow seemed to be
slipping away backward. Suddenly, as the child rolled downward on its
mother's knees, all wet with snow, its eyes were caught by a bright
glancing light on the white ground, and, with the ready transition of
infancy, it was immediately absorbed in watching the bright living
thing running towards it, yet never arriving. That bright living thing
must be caught; and in an instant the child had slipped on all-fours,
and held out one little hand to catch the gleam. But the gleam would
not be caught in that way, and now the head was held up to see where
the cunning gleam came from. It came from a very bright place; and the
little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the