"With the bitter over, and the avil past, come rest for her and all that lie there."
"Eh, 'bien,' the game is done!"
"If we stay here we shall die also."
"If we go we die, perhaps." . . .
"Don't spake it. We will go, and we will return when the breath of summer comes from the South."
"It shall be so."
"Hush! Did you not hear—?"
"I did not hear. I only see an eagle, and it flies towards Whiteface
Mountain."
And Shon McGann and Pretty Pierre turned back from the end of their quest—from a mighty grave behind to a lonely waste before; and though one was snow-blind, and the other knew that on him fell the chiefer weight of a great misfortune, for he must provide food and fire and be as a mother to his comrade—they had courage; without which, men are as the standing straw in an unreaped field in winter; but having become like the hooded pine, that keepeth green in frost, and hath the bounding blood in all its icy branches.
And whence they came and wherefore was as thus: