“Kiss thy child—thy little Gustave, my husband.” Then, to the priest:
“Last night I saw the White Omen, mon pere; and one could not die, nor let the child die, without a blessing. But we shall both live now.”
The priest blessed all, and long time he talked with the wife of the lost Michel. When he rose to go to bed she said to him: “The journey has been too long, mon pere. Your face is pale and you tremble. Youth has no patience. Gustave hurried you.”
“Gustave yearned for thy Fanchon and the child. The White Omen made him afraid.”
“But the journey was too much. It is a hard, a bitter trail.”
“I have come gladly as I went once with thy Michel. But, as thou sayest, I am tired—at my heart. I will get to my rest.”
Near dawn Gustave started from the bed where he sat watching, for he saw the White Omen over against the shrine, and then a voice said, as it were out of a great distance:
“Even me also, O my father!”
With awed footsteps, going to see, he found that a man had passed out upon that trail by which no hunter from life can set a mark to guide a comrade; leaving behind the bones and flesh which God set up, too heavy to carry on so long a journey.