been saying to me that the hope of immortality descended from heaven
on our lives, just as hushed, white, and soft as the snow on the naked
earth"--

"Oh, how beautiful!" interposed Stina.

"And so I thought when the shock came, and the whole forest trembled,
and the snow fell from the trees with the sound of thunder,--now do not
be angry,--that in the same way the hope of immortality had fallen from
the mother of the boys, and you and all of us, in our great anxiety for
the lives of the little fellows. We rushed about in sorrow and
lamentation, and some of us in ill-concealed frenzy, lest the boys had
received a call from the other life, or lest some occurrence here had
led them to the brink of eternity."

"O my God, yes!"

"Now we have had this hope of immortality hanging over us for many
thousand years, for it is older, much older than Christianity; and we
have progressed no farther than this."

"Oh, you are right! Yes, you are a thousand times right! Think of it!"
she exclaimed, and walked on in silent brooding.

"You said before that I was hard toward you, and then I had done nothing
but remind you of the belief in immortality you had taught the boys."

"Oh, that is true; forgive me! Oh, yes indeed!"

"For you know that you had taught them that it was far, far better to be
with God than to be here; and that to have wings and be an angel was the
highest glory a little child could attain; indeed, that the angels
themselves came and carried away unhappy little children."

"Oh, I beg of you, no more!" she moaned, placing both hands on her ears.
"Oh, how thoughtless I have been!" she added.

"Do not you believe all this yourself, then?"

"Yes, to be sure I believe it! There have been times in my life when
such thoughts were my sole consolation. But you really confuse me
altogether."

And then she told me in a most touching way that her head was no longer
very strong; she had wept and suffered so much; but the hope of a better
life after this had often been her one consolation.

Atlung's mournful call, with always the same words, was heard ever and
anon, and just at this moment fell on our ears. With a start we were
back again in the dreadful reality that the boys were not yet found, and
that the longer the time that elapsed before they were found, the
greater the certainty that they must pay the penalty of a dangerous
illness. It continued to snow so that notwithstanding the moonlight we
walked in a mis